Hello,

Firstly, thank you so much to everyone who has already taken part in an interview! I have done 18 interviews so far and am massively and predictably behind with trasncribing, as soon as I manage to type up your transcript I WILL send it to you so that you can check it, probably in the first few months of 2012.

Secondly, I am now looking to do 12 more interviews for my PhD before I finish up, so I am looking for people to interview. These are not the same as the interviews that I.P. Freely and Kirds are currently doing for the ARRG Film.

These 12 interviews will just be audio-recorded and will probably last between 1-3 hours depending on how much you have to say! I will type them up and use what we talk about as 'data' in my PhD thesis, and perhaps in journal articles/book chapters as well.

I am specifically interested in talking about, in detail, your opinions and experiences of ARRG's growth and development over the past 12 months or so. I think this has been a really important, exciting, challenging and busy time for ARRG and I really want to capture all the changes we've gone through, all the work it has taken and all the different opinions and experiences of all of that in my PhD writing.

This will include discussions around the general themes of:

Graduating from the WFTDA Apprenticeship Programme;
Home Teams;
The Wrecking Balls;
Changes in the Fresh Meat Programme;
The World Cup and Team Scotland.

As well as anything else that YOU think has been important for ARRG over the past year. This might include what it is like to skate on the WFTDA 20 or Team Scotland, what it was like to do your minimums or a bout-ready assessment, your opinions on the league's structure, the committee work involved in organising all of this, or how good your home team logo is. I am interested in basically everything.

I am also interested in interviewing about specific bouts that I didn't attend, so anyone who skated at/went to LRR or Leeds...

Whether you have been with ARRG for four years or four months I am interested in interviewing you! I want to interview Skaters, Refs and Non-Skating Members alike. If you've already done an interview but fancy another one, that is also okay!

Some pre-Xmas dates that are available for interviewing are:

Sat 26 Nov [morning or early evening]
Mon 28 Nov [any time]
Tues 29 Nov [evening]
Thurs 1 Dec [evening]
Tues 6 Dec [any time]

If you would like to do an interview and none of these suit we can try and arrange another time, or do it in January.

So, please email me maddiebreeze@gmail.com if you would like to take part in an interview.

Thanks!

What the flip is this about?

I am doing a PhD in Sociology, and my specific research topic started off as 'Gender and Roller Derby', looking at how ideas about women and men, masuclinity and femininity relate to what we do in ARRG. This has chagned quite a lot since I started though, and now I'm not quite sure what my main interest is, but I think it might be to do with how over the past few years roller derby has become more and more of a 'serious sport', so that's mainly why I'm interested in doing these interviews.

This research also includes a film-making project and 'fieldwork' basically taking notes about what we do at practices, meetings and other derby related events and trying to write an account of what goes on.

If you have any questions or concerns please let me know.