Our researchers are talking to people who took part in riots for a joint study by the Guardian and London School of Economics A month ago, we launched a major research study to find out more about the causes and the consequences of the riots that spread across England in August this year. Now more than 30 researchers are working full-time interviewing people involved in the disturbances in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Nottingham. They are all part of Reading the Riots, a project that aims to achieve a better understanding of the riots ? and why they happened ? by gaining the perspectives of those who were directly involved. The study, carried out jointly by the Guardian and London School of Economics, is modelled on a landmark study conducted in the aftermath of the Detroit riots in 1967 , the most deadly riots ever experienced in the United States. The England Riots, as they have become known, constituted the most serious bout of civil unrest in a generation. Five people died and more than 3,000 were arrested when a disturbance that began in Tottenham on 6 August spread across the capital and to towns and cities across the country during four nights of arson and looting. We launched this study because there was a deficit in empirical research into the riots, despite their disturbing scale and nature. Most notably, the government has resisted opening a full public inquiry, choosing instead to create a four-person panel to listen to victims of the riots. The perspectives of victims and local communities are of course crucial, but we feel that the best understanding of the disorder will be obtained from the people who were responsible for it. Reading the Riots, which is funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Open Society Foundations , seeks to find answers through rigorous social research. In the weeks after the project's launch, more than 450 people from across England applied to be researchers on the project. The team we have now selected are skilled interviewers who can draw on good contacts in riot-affected communities. They come from a range of backgrounds, and include PhD students, youth workers, journalists, mentors, lecturers, bloggers, a taxi driver, a probation officer and a consultant. You can read more about the team here . Their attempts to find people who were involved in the riots, and interview them in confidence, are being aided by an informal network of youth groups, community workers, teachers and lawyers who are putting us in touch with people they know participated in the disorder. We want to give everyone who was involved the opportunity to speak to us ? regardless of their background or circumstances. If you know people who were involved in the riots, we would be grateful if you could put us in touch with them. Anonymity is something we're taking extremely seriously. There will be no record of the names, addresses or photographs of the people who take part in the study. We are simply interested in what they have to say. The study has been approved by the LSE's ethics committee. We are also speaking to the many people who have appeared in court in connection with the riots, drawing on our own database of riot-related court cases. We have written to more than 1,000 people prosecuted over the riots, and our researchers are also visiting their homes. Potentially, we would like to interview people in prison, and we are in discussions with the Ministry of Justice to enable people who are on remand or serving sentences to also have the opportunity to speak to us in confidence. Our interviews are semi-structured, and last around an hour. Mostly, they comprise general discussions about people's experiences ? known in social research as "qualitative" interviews. But there are also more structured survey-style questions, about the backgrounds and attitudes of people involved in the riots. If you were somehow involved in the riots, and would like to be interviewed, you can contact us in confidence by sending an email to readingtheriots@guardian.co.uk . We hope these interviews will provide us with a deeper understanding of the nature of the August riots from the perspective of people who were there. The large amount of material we will begin analysing in the coming weeks should bring clarity to a number of assumptions about the riots, from the relevance of poverty to the involvement of gangs and the use of Blackberry BBM messaging and other social media. Prof Tim Newburn , who is leading the LSE's involvement in the project, is hiring a team of academics who will analyse the material generated from the interviews. Simultaneously, we are analysing a database of more than 2.5m tweets, provided to us by Twitter. We will be teaming up with academics at Manchester University who have expertise in analysing large amounts of Twitter data. We hope that by December we will have a better grasp of exactly how rioting and looting spread across English cities this summer ? and why. UK riots Crime London Birmingham Manchester Liverpool Nottingham Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds