Jessica Nina Lester

Having been trained in cultural studies and qualitative research methodology, I take an interdisciplinary approach to much of my work, including both the methodological and substantive foci in my research program. In my methodological work, I publish in areas related to qualitative method/ology, with a particular focus on technical and pragmatic concerns in qualitative inquiry (e.g., establishing validity), discourse and conversation analysis methods, digital tools/spaces in qualitative research, and disability in critical qualitative inquiry. In much of my substantive research, I have sought to examine and illustrate how everyday and institutional language use makes visible what and who becomes positioned as normal and abnormal in relation to the oft taken-for-granted normality-abnormality binary. Most recently, I co-authored the book, Doing Qualitative Research in a Digital World (Sage, 2022), and co-edited the volume, Centering Diverse Bodyminds in Critical Qualitative Inquiry (Routledge, 2021). At Indiana University, I teach qualitative method/ology courses and mentor graduate students in qualitative inquiry from a range of disciplines.