Narrative, participatory methods, and social transformation (bookings closed)

Description:

Narrative research is a dynamic and growing field in the social sciences. It frequently engages with issues of social justice and social change, particularly in the current context of global inequalities, conflict, mobility and precarity. How to address these issues in our methods, for instance through the involvement of research participants, and through relating research processes and analyses to social transformation, is a common and complex question. This day course seeks to develop narrative researchers’ understanding of these issues through their work with two significant practitioners of narrative and participatory methods, Professor Jill Bradbury and Professor Michelle Fine.

Participants will be asked to address:

• How critical participation challenges notions of expertise, objectivity and the very cultural frames of inquiry
• The ethical dilemmas/opportunities in critical PAR
• How affect circulates in critical PAR projects
• Writing with/ not on/for/about Others - struggles in the’contact zone’
• Whether critical research can provoke a critique of structural violence and a reimagination of radical possibilities
• What the tensions are between activist (interventionist) agendas and participants’ agendas
• Questions of individual agency and structural change
• Pragmatic constraints, particularly within the parameters of student research projects
• Problems and possibilities of team work (crossing identities and blurring disciplinary boundaries)
• Whether it is possible to be creative and responsive without sacrificing rigour
• Distance and proximity, thinking and feeling in engaged research

Illustrative examples of data and analysis from empirical projects that we have conducted will be provided but participants are also encouraged to bring their own transcripts or images, (with ethical clearance) of or to consult about other material they might bring (in this case, please email Corinnec.squire@uel.ac.uk)

This workshop is suitable for those from all social science backgrounds, at intermediate and above levels of research skills. but there are many good and affordable cafes and restaurants nearby which participants can use.

This event is part of a series arranged with Professors Bradbury and Fine as part of their programme as NCRM International Visiting Scholars, at the Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London, and the Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL.

Cost:

Free

Region:

Greater London

Keywords:

Participatory Research, Participatory Action Research (PAR), Narrative Methods, Narrative research

Related publications and presentations:

Participatory Research
Participatory Action Research (PAR)
Narrative Methods

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