Focus group research is a useful methodology within and beyond the field of political science, as a source of core or supplementary data. The focus group literature is rich and full of guidance, but advice on using digital tools in certain stages of focus group research is relatively scarce. Aiming to fill those gaps, this article draws on experience with two projects in order to outline how researchers can harness technologies for focus group recruitment and data analysis. While traditional recruitment and data analysis techniques are useful, we identify advantages of technology-assisted approaches, particularly for focus group research with marginalized communities. Geared to both new and existing focus group users, the article identifies fruitful ways to harness a wider range of technologies for conducting focus group research while maintaining consistency with established principles and practices.

Access to information and freedom of information (ATI/FOI) requests are an increasingly utilized means of generating data in the social sciences. An impressive multi-disciplinary and international literature has emerged which mobilizes ATI/FOI requests in research on policing, national security, and imprisonment. Absent from this growing literature is work which deploys ATI/FOI requests in research on higher education institutions (HEIs). In this article I examine the use of ATI/FOI requests as a methodological tool for producing data on HEIs. I highlight the data-generating opportunities that this tool offers higher education researchers and provide a first-hand account of how ATI/FOI requests can be mobilized in higher education research. I argue that despite the value of ATI/FOI requests for producing data on academic institutions, the information management practices of HEIs limit the effectiveness of ATI/FOI in ways that I detail drawing on my experience using information requests to scrutinize the quality assurance of undergraduate degree programs in Ontario. I suggest that in an age of rankings and league tables HEIs are likely to prioritize the protection of their reputation over the right of access. In conclusion I consider the implications of the article’s findings for higher education researchers and ATI/FOI users.

Transitional justice seeks to address legacies of violence around political transition from authoritarianism and armed conflict. It does so in ways driven by a global discourse that is prescriptive and often remote from the contexts in which it is articulated and the populations it claims to serve. Transitional justice is also embedded in teleological liberal approaches to transition, with a perceived endpoint of liberal democracy. Critical approaches to transitional justice have used qualitative methodologies to understand the agendas of those—notably victims of violence—that transitional justice foregrounds, and to demonstrate that transitional justice mechanisms often serve elite agendas, while minimizing the agency of socially excluded populations. An alternative, minimally explored route to victim engagement with such processes has been the mobilization of victims and victim organizations, an emancipatory approach that seeks to provide a space for victims to engage in transitional justice debates on their own terms. Here, a research engagement with a victims’ organization through a Participatory Action Research modality is described in which researchers support victim engagement in peer research to catalyze a social movement of victims in post-conflict Nepal.