Innovative qualitative psychological research in light of future methodological, societal and health challenges – looking ahead

The chapter provides a concluding discussion of the innovative qualitative research presented in this handbook and how it addresses pressing methodological, societal and health challenges. It portrays how innovation is approached in a variety of ways in the various contributions, i.e., by developing existing methodological approaches further, combining approaches from different research traditions in new ways, linking qualitative research in psychology to other fields, addressing pressing societal issues in innovative ways, or by revising the root metaphors of how we understand human meaning making in psychology. The chapter also asks what we need innovation in qualitative psychology for and reminds us that innovation needs to have a purpose – i.e., it needs to be able to contribute to advancing the field by adding new knowledge to the existing body of literature and fresh insights to phenomena under study. The chapter concludes by giving an outlook on further developments in the field: pressing societal challenges that need to be addressed by qualitative researchers in psychology, methodological potentials and perils through recent developments, e.g., rapidly evolving information and communication technologies, open science, decolonizing psychology, and pressures of academic life under an increasingly neoliberal regime.