Olga Campbell-Thomson, Theory as method: the importance of Foucault in my doctoral research, Social Theory Applied blog, November 4 2013
Now that I have completed my doctoral dissertation, I have the feeling it could be accomplished in a shorter time and it could progress in a more straightforward manner… In short, I wish I knew where my search for method and theoretical underpinnings would lead my work to. Well, back then I didn’t know. So, the entire process of doctoral research was lengthy and rather circuitous, but it was also rewarding as it evolved.
What started as a search for the method, ended up as a propitious finding of the theoretical framework for the analysis and interpretation of the data. My encounter with Foucault’s theorizing on the constitution of the subject not only shaped my thinking, it also allowed me to gather a voluminous corpus of the data into a manageable structure, and helped decide on the methods of data analysis. In this respect, theoretical perspective and method evolved in tandem and were supporting each other. However, meaningful encounter with Foucault did not happen right away, and the name itself was nowhere in my initial research proposal.
Foucault News 