Autumn Term
Monday 7 November, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.10
Narrative open space: ‘Freedom to Learn’
This session will be facilitated by Alys Mendus.
Alys writes:My PhD is a post-qualitative rhizomatic search for my ideal school around the world using performative autoethnography. I am writing the main chapters of the PhD in a looping ‘Choose your own adventure storybook’ style leading to a performed story of my ‘utopias of hope’ exploring the multiplicities of Alys as my autoethnographic ‘we’ (Spry, 2016).
Monday 28 November, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.10
Narrative open space: social gathering and book reading session
Ken Gale ( University of Plymouth) and Jonathan Wyatt (University of
Edinburgh) who are both GSOE doctoral graduates will be presenting
Jane Speedy with the award for her book:
Speedy, J (2015) ‘Staring at the Park: a poetic, auto-ethnographic inquiry’
Which they collected on her behalf at the Qualitative Inquiry Congress in
Urbana/Champaign, USA earlier this year. Jonathan and Ken will also read from their own forthcoming books, both to be published by Routledge:
Gale, K : Madness as Methodology: Bringing Concepts to Life in Contemporary Theorizing and Inquiry
Wyatt, J: Therapy, stand-up and the gesture of writing: Towards creative-relational inquiry’.
Monday 5 December, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.07
Narrative open space:
This session will be facilitated by Liz Crow and will be an opportunity to explore ethical complexities that arise where personal life interjects itself into research.
I am an activist and performer currently researching an embodied and humanistic methodology of activism, using practice-led arts methods. I received full ethics approval for planned research elements, but unplanned and uninvited events have also made themselves integral to my findings. During the course of my research, I have experienced a prolonged family crisis which, whilst personal and private, is deeply informing and extending my research. I can’t not incorporate this knowledge or its source into my writing, yet the story is not fully mine to tell.What options exist when a story belongs to more than the researcher? Or when full consent cannot be sought, because it would require asking someone to revisit experiences too traumatic yet to return to? What happens when overt consent cannot be gained, yet an experience cannot be extricated from the research, ethically or pragmatically?
Summer Term
Monday 5 June, 5:30-7:00 pm, room 4.07
Narrative open space: ‘Making meaning of life changes’
This session is facilitated by Margaret Page.
This is a space to discover how we make meaning of significant life changes. We may explore the impact of a single event or a series of events that have led us to changes in our sense of self in relation to others, of who we are, of how we are perceived and perceive others, what motivates us, what is important, or no longer important, what we desire- or no longer desire to be or to do.I am interested to explore subtle processes of shift and change that may be embodied, and revisited, in the aftermath of such an event, or events, and how we make meaning of them.The changes I am living relate to my decision to retire from my academic post, following collapse at the end of a hiking holiday, later diagnosed as a stroke. Did I retire because I could not longer manage the institutional demands and pace? Because I was ill? Too Old? Bored and ready for a change? the narrative mattered to me because if carried implications for the future. But the narrative is still revealing itself – in conversation with others, and with my body.Please come prepared to write, to read your writing, to listen, and to write again. We will aim to build up a collage of experiences of life changes and of the shifting meanings that we and others attribute to them.
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