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Corinne Squire

University of East London, Social Sciences, Emerita

University of Edinburgh, Sociology, Visiting Research Professor

University College London, Social Research Institute, Honorary Professor

University of the Witwatersrand, Psychology, Associate Research Fellow

The University of Manchester, School of Education, Honorary Professor

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Professor of Social Sciences. Co-director, Association of Narrative Research and Practice. Research interests in HIV and citizenship, refugee education and politics, subjectivities and popular culture, narrative theory and methods.
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Books by Corinne Squire

What is narrative research? Starting out. Chapter 1 in What is narrative research?

by Corinne Squire, Lars Christer Hyden, and Margareta Hyden

Introduction, 'Why the three letters matter', 'Living with HIV and ARVs'

This book is about living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, and with antiretroviral,... more This book is about living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, and with antiretroviral, or ARV, therapy, the combination of medications that helps HIV positive
people to live long and healthy lives. Today, when ARV treatment is more and more available to those who need it, and is in prospect for those who do not yet have access, the
two three-letter acronyms, HIV and ARV together, increasingly
of the pandemic. The book examines lives lived with HIV and ARVs in different national contexts, primarily the United Kingdom and South Africa, where I have conducted interviews
about HIV support with people living with HIV, since 1993 in the United Kingdom (most recently in 2011), and since 2001 in South Africa (most recently in 2012).

Introduction (What is narrative research?), Doing narrative research edition 2

From experience-centred to socioculturally-oriented approaches to narrative

HIV technologies

M. Davis and C. Squire, HIV Technologies in …, Jan 1, 2010

Technologies of treatment: scaling up ART in the Western Cape, South Africa

This chapter examines technologies of 'treatment scaleup,' the extension of antiretroviral treatm... more This chapter examines technologies of 'treatment scaleup,' the extension of antiretroviral treatment (ART) to most or all of HIV positive people who need it, in the Western Cape, South Africa. The chapter describes three technologies related to ART scaleup: those of administration; partnership, rather different to the 'partnership' Campbell (this volume) describes and thirdly what we refer to as treatment citizenship. These non-medical treatment technologies operate alongside conventional medical treatment technologies to make up a successful, even exemplary ART scaleup. The chapter also argues that the success of these technologies derives from their involvement in a larger phenomenon: a new construction of 'HIV citizenship' within the Western Cape.

Particularity, potentiation, citizenship and pragmatism

The case studies presented in this volume have addressed HIV technologies as formations of the ma... more The case studies presented in this volume have addressed HIV technologies as formations of the material, embodied, social and political in modes of engagement with the HIV epidemic. As argued throughout, this notion of HIV technologies is needed to grapple with the particularities of the HIV pandemic in the treatment possibility era. This approach provides a way of conceptualising HIV medical, social, cultural and political treatment and prevention technologies and their hybrids. The perspective draws attention to the sociocultural and political aspects of HIV medical treatment technologies and to the increasingly bio-technical bases for HIV prevention. It also encourages reflection on forms of HIV prevention and social care that are not typically understood as technologies but that, as has been demonstrated, share many structural and political features with technical, biomedical means of addressing HIV. This perspective can also allow us to grapple with relations between treatment and prevention, as many of the chapters in this volume have demonstrated.

HIV prevention and treatment technologies in international perspective

Introduction: What is narrative research? Doing narrative research edition 1

Doing Narrative Research edition 1, Jan 1, 2008

Experience-centered and culturally-oriented approaches to narrative, Doing narrative research edition 1

Doing narrative research, Jan 1, 2008

Doing narrative research

Examining narrative methods in the context of its multi-disciplinary social science origins, this... more Examining narrative methods in the context of its multi-disciplinary social science origins, this text looks at its theoretical underpinnings, while retaining an emphasis on the process of doing narrative research. The authors provide a comprehensive guide to narrative methods, taking the reader from initial decisions about forms of narrative analysis, through more complex issues of reflexivity, interpretation and the research context. The contributions included here clearly demonstrate the value of narrative methods for contemporary social ...

HIV In South Africa: Talking About the Big Thing

HIV in South Africa Of approximately 39.5 million HIV positive people in the world, 24.7 million ... more

Public emotions

by Corinne Squire and Amal treacher

Emotions are central to our practices and understanding of public life. This book examines the... more Emotions are central to our practices and understanding of public life. This book examines the political, social and personal consequences of public emotions in relation to conflict, ritual, social classification, collective life, identity, memory and power. A multidisciplinary collaboration between psychotherapists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and cultural theorists, Public Emotions showcases cutting edge thought on the emotional character of public life in many continents and contexts

Culture In Psychology

Reconfiguring psychology and culture

Culture in psychology, Jan 1, 2000

The uses of narrative

Lines of Narrative: Psychological Perspectives

Lines of narrative

Excerpt from&amp;amp;amp;quot; To live in the Borderlands means you&amp;amp;amp;quot; by ... more Excerpt from&amp;amp;amp;quot; To live in the Borderlands means you&amp;amp;amp;quot; by Gloria Anzaldua from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestizo, copyright 1987 by Gloria Anzaldua; reprinted with permission of Aunt Lute Books. Copyright 1998 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights ...

The number and proportion of women infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and with ... more The number and proportion of women infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have increased rapidly throughout the last decade. Despite these increases, the scientific community has focused limited research attention on women living with HIV infection. Data from studies of predominantly gay/bisexual men may not reliably be extended to women; studies of the natural history of HIV infection in women are needed. Obstetrician-gynaecologists are increasingly called upon to diagnose HIV infection in women and provide care in both clinical and research settings. In this review we discuss the serodiagnosis of HIV infection in women; the impact of pregnancy on HIV disease progression; transmission of HIV infection from mother to offspring; gynaecological infections and malignancies which may manifest differently in HIV-infected women; and clinical care of women living with HIV.

What is narrative research? Starting out. Chapter 1 in What is narrative research?

by Corinne Squire, Lars Christer Hyden, and Margareta Hyden

Introduction, 'Why the three letters matter', 'Living with HIV and ARVs'

This book is about living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, and with antiretroviral,... more This book is about living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV, and with antiretroviral, or ARV, therapy, the combination of medications that helps HIV positive
people to live long and healthy lives. Today, when ARV treatment is more and more available to those who need it, and is in prospect for those who do not yet have access, the
two three-letter acronyms, HIV and ARV together, increasingly
of the pandemic. The book examines lives lived with HIV and ARVs in different national contexts, primarily the United Kingdom and South Africa, where I have conducted interviews
about HIV support with people living with HIV, since 1993 in the United Kingdom (most recently in 2011), and since 2001 in South Africa (most recently in 2012).

Introduction (What is narrative research?), Doing narrative research edition 2

From experience-centred to socioculturally-oriented approaches to narrative

HIV technologies

M. Davis and C. Squire, HIV Technologies in …, Jan 1, 2010

Technologies of treatment: scaling up ART in the Western Cape, South Africa

This chapter examines technologies of 'treatment scaleup,' the extension of antiretroviral treatm... more This chapter examines technologies of 'treatment scaleup,' the extension of antiretroviral treatment (ART) to most or all of HIV positive people who need it, in the Western Cape, South Africa. The chapter describes three technologies related to ART scaleup: those of administration; partnership, rather different to the 'partnership' Campbell (this volume) describes and thirdly what we refer to as treatment citizenship. These non-medical treatment technologies operate alongside conventional medical treatment technologies to make up a successful, even exemplary ART scaleup. The chapter also argues that the success of these technologies derives from their involvement in a larger phenomenon: a new construction of 'HIV citizenship' within the Western Cape.

Particularity, potentiation, citizenship and pragmatism

The case studies presented in this volume have addressed HIV technologies as formations of the ma... more The case studies presented in this volume have addressed HIV technologies as formations of the material, embodied, social and political in modes of engagement with the HIV epidemic. As argued throughout, this notion of HIV technologies is needed to grapple with the particularities of the HIV pandemic in the treatment possibility era. This approach provides a way of conceptualising HIV medical, social, cultural and political treatment and prevention technologies and their hybrids. The perspective draws attention to the sociocultural and political aspects of HIV medical treatment technologies and to the increasingly bio-technical bases for HIV prevention. It also encourages reflection on forms of HIV prevention and social care that are not typically understood as technologies but that, as has been demonstrated, share many structural and political features with technical, biomedical means of addressing HIV. This perspective can also allow us to grapple with relations between treatment and prevention, as many of the chapters in this volume have demonstrated.

HIV prevention and treatment technologies in international perspective

Introduction: What is narrative research? Doing narrative research edition 1

Doing Narrative Research edition 1, Jan 1, 2008

Experience-centered and culturally-oriented approaches to narrative, Doing narrative research edition 1

Doing narrative research, Jan 1, 2008

Doing narrative research

Examining narrative methods in the context of its multi-disciplinary social science origins, this... more Examining narrative methods in the context of its multi-disciplinary social science origins, this text looks at its theoretical underpinnings, while retaining an emphasis on the process of doing narrative research. The authors provide a comprehensive guide to narrative methods, taking the reader from initial decisions about forms of narrative analysis, through more complex issues of reflexivity, interpretation and the research context. The contributions included here clearly demonstrate the value of narrative methods for contemporary social ...

HIV In South Africa: Talking About the Big Thing

HIV in South Africa Of approximately 39.5 million HIV positive people in the world, 24.7 million ... more

Public emotions

by Corinne Squire and Amal treacher

Emotions are central to our practices and understanding of public life. This book examines the... more Emotions are central to our practices and understanding of public life. This book examines the political, social and personal consequences of public emotions in relation to conflict, ritual, social classification, collective life, identity, memory and power. A multidisciplinary collaboration between psychotherapists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and cultural theorists, Public Emotions showcases cutting edge thought on the emotional character of public life in many continents and contexts

Culture In Psychology

Reconfiguring psychology and culture

Culture in psychology, Jan 1, 2000

The uses of narrative

Lines of Narrative: Psychological Perspectives

Lines of narrative

Excerpt from&amp;amp;amp;quot; To live in the Borderlands means you&amp;amp;amp;quot; by ... more Excerpt from&amp;amp;amp;quot; To live in the Borderlands means you&amp;amp;amp;quot; by Gloria Anzaldua from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestizo, copyright 1987 by Gloria Anzaldua; reprinted with permission of Aunt Lute Books. Copyright 1998 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights ...

The number and proportion of women infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and with ... more The number and proportion of women infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have increased rapidly throughout the last decade. Despite these increases, the scientific community has focused limited research attention on women living with HIV infection. Data from studies of predominantly gay/bisexual men may not reliably be extended to women; studies of the natural history of HIV infection in women are needed. Obstetrician-gynaecologists are increasingly called upon to diagnose HIV infection in women and provide care in both clinical and research settings. In this review we discuss the serodiagnosis of HIV infection in women; the impact of pregnancy on HIV disease progression; transmission of HIV infection from mother to offspring; gynaecological infections and malignancies which may manifest differently in HIV-infected women; and clinical care of women living with HIV.

Narrative, discourse and the unconscious

Psychosocial perspectives, 2000

Supplemental material for: The Long and Winding Road: Archiving and Re-Using Qualitative Data from 12 Research Projects Spanning 16 Years

Supplemental material, dodds_supplementary_file for The Long and Winding Road: Archiving and Re-U... more Supplemental material, dodds_supplementary_file for The Long and Winding Road: Archiving and Re-Using Qualitative Data from 12 Research Projects Spanning 16 Years by Catherine Dodds, Peter Keogh, Adam Bourne, Lisa McDaid, Corinne Squire, Peter Weatherburn and Ingrid Young in Sociological Research Online

HIV in South Africa

Routledge eBooks, Sep 12, 2007

1. HIV in South Africa 2. The Othering and Owning of HIV 3. Health and Healing: Traditional and W... more

What is a Narrative?

Indiana University Press eBooks, Oct 6, 2020

HIV Treatment and Prevention Technologies in International Perspective

In the third decade of the HIV pandemic, interest has intensified in technological solutions for ... more

The Personal Is Political

Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 22, 2020

This chapter examines social justice as an exemplar of progressive social change in its relations... more This chapter examines social justice as an exemplar of progressive social change in its relations to narrative. Social justice can be seen as the limit case of social change, the condition to which all efforts at social change aspire. Alternatively, it can be seen as a condition tangential to social change, a state rather than a process. Perhaps it can be seen in both ways, so that the conjunction between narrative and social justice becomes simply a pointed, explicit version of that between narrative and social change—a version that resolves the ambiguities of change, while raising new questions around the complicated relations between narrative and justice, and the nature of social justice itself.

NEIGHBORS WHO MIGHT BECOME FRIENDS":. Selves, Genres, and Citizenship in Narratives of HIV

Sociological Quarterly, Dec 1, 1998

HIV is a condition that seems powerfully to define identities and communities. In some cases it a... more HIV is a condition that seems powerfully to define identities and communities. In some cases it appears to have generated new, culturally and politically radical forms of both. Drawing on a series of interviews over two to three years with people infected or affected by HIV, this article examines how interviewees describe their communities and identities as determined by HIV, though in partial, limited ways. The article explores how the "self' operates in the interviews, not as a consistent, reflexive project but as an occasional, situated resistance. I argue that the narrative form of the interviews was what enabled provisional, variable identities and communities to be articulated. The "coming out" genre was widely deployed to describe negotiating HIV stigma and fatality, as well as accepting and to some extent disengaging from serostatus. This genre's allowance of incompleteness also gave a place to HIV's abjection, to horrors that cannot be storied into subjective meaningfulness. Finally, the article looks at how, rather than focusing on identities or communities, interviewees told stories of citizenship, of subject positions shaped by neighborhood, national and transnational, as much as individual or group concerns. HIV is often said to be producing new forms of politics and subjectivity. The virus leads to earlier than usual death in the overdeveloped world, and it is associated with stigmatized behaviors and marginalised social groups. In such circumstances, AIDS activists' campaigns for better education and treatment, their crusades against discriminatory policies and negative representations, and the simple survival of people living with HIV have become emblems of active and creative politics and subjectivities. Such modest yet marked achievements are especially striking in a postmodern world that is often said to be postpolitical and characterized by fragmented and chaotic subjectivities. This article examines how effective politics and subjectivities appear in the stories of people who are themselves infected or affected by HIV. Previous analyses of such stories have treated the stories as indications, either of how people manage their lives and reconstruct their identities under the influence of the virus or, alternately, of how discourses and practices around HIV shape these lives (

Moral barriers to HIV prevention and care for gay and bisexual men: Challenges in times of conservatism in Brazil

Sociology of Health & Illness

This article examines narratives about promiscuity that are emphasized by some gay and bisexual m... more This article examines narratives about promiscuity that are emphasized by some gay and bisexual men who are themselves living with HIV. We used semi‐structured interviews to assess the processes, outcomes, and meanings of HIV diagnosis among 10 young gay and bisexual men aged between 18 and 30 years old. Interviews were conducted in health service settings for the diagnosis and treatment of HIV and AIDS in Salvador, Brazil. Based on a socioculturally oriented approach, the narratives suggest that discourse about promiscuity seems to persist, or is even strengthened, in order to explain HIV infection among young gays/bisexual men and to emphasize a more restrained sexual life following HIV diagnosis. Despite the biotechnologies and biomedical advances, some difficulties and tensions also persist in the daily life of young people living with HIV. Difficulties in starting new relationships, dilemmas around responsibility for infection/transmission, fear and guilt are elements that stan...

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Lines of Narrative: Psychosocial Perspectives

Introduction Molly Andrews, Shelley Day Sclater, Corinne Squire and Amal Treacher Section I. Narr... more Introduction Molly Andrews, Shelley Day Sclater, Corinne Squire and Amal Treacher Section I. Narrative and Culture Preface: Narrative's Moment Norman K. Denzin Introduction Corinne Squire 1. Narrative, Civil Society and Public Culture Ronald N. Jacobs 2. Resurrective Practice and Narrative Clive Seale 3. Wedding Bells and Baby Carriages: Heterosexuals Imagine Gay Families, Gay Families Imagine Themselves Suzanne Danuta Walters 4. Narratives as Bad Faith Ian Craib Section II. Narrative and Life History Introduction Molly Andrews 5. When the Story's Over: Narrative Foreclosure and the Possibility of Self-Renewal Mark Freeman 6. A Cautious Ethnography of Socialism: Autobiographical Narrative in the Czech Republic Zdenek Konopasek with Molly Andrews 7. 'Papa's Bomb': the Local and the Global in Women's Manhattan Project Personal Narratives Carol Wolkowitz 8. Betrayals, Trauma and Self-Redemption? The Meanings of 'the Closing of the Mines' in Two Ex-miners' Narratives Tom Wengraf Section III. Narrative and Discourse Introduction Shelley Day Sclater 9. Narrative, Discourse and the Unconscious: a Case Study of Tommy Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson 10. Fictionalising Identity? Ontological Assumptions and Methodological Productions of ('Anorexic') Subjectivities Helen Malson 11. 'Let them Rot': Four Boys Talk About Punishment Marion V. Smith 12. Narrative and the Discursive (Re)construction of Events Jackie Abell, Elizabeth L. Stokoe and Michael Billig Conclusion Phil Bradbury and Shelley Sclater

Doing Narrative Research Second Edition

Introduction: What Is Narrative Research?

Narrative Research, Secondary Analysis and Family Lives

SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, 2021

Investing in the Pandemic

Palgrave Macmillan eBooks, Nov 29, 2013

White trash pride and the exemplary black citizen

Narrative Inquiry, Sep 26, 2002

This paper examines narrative representations of “race” and gender in daytime television talk sho... more This paper examines narrative representations of “race” and gender in daytime television talk shows. This television genre is saturated with told stories; indeed, it often seems to be these stories that account for the genre’s critical and academic dismissal, despite its fifteen-year dominance in daytime television, particularly in the US. The genre is also characterised by visual patterns that have narrative features. Disparities have been claimed between “serious” shows that try to analyse social issues and tell “true stories,” and “entertainment” shows in which issues of gender, “race” and sexuality are subsumed by stories of “trailer park” class otherness and emotional anarchy. The paper draws on social-scientific and cultural-studies research, and on two small, time-sampled groups of US shows, to argue for a continuum between serious and entertainment shows. It suggests that serious shows are also characterised by story-telling and moments of emotional incoherence in narrative, and that these elements can be as resistant and persuasive as the shows’ more explicit arguments. On the other hand, entertainment shows can provide a forum for the affective staging of social conflicts, in the process turning their narratives into counter-narratives that are a form of theory. The paper thus argues that visual and auditory narratives on all the shows work in similar ways to produce counternarratives.

The Centre for Narrative Research

Lawrence & Wishart eBooks, Sep 1, 2020

This chapter tells the story of the Centre for Narrative Research: where the inspiration for its ... more This chapter tells the story of the Centre for Narrative Research: where the inspiration for its formation came from, how it was situated within the wider political and intellectual culture of the University of East London, and how it has developed over the twenty years of its existence. The chapter closes with a few thoughts about the future, what kind of work we hope we have helped to lay some foundation for, and what we see as the greatest obstacles to our vision. The Background: What and who we are The Centre for Narrative Research was officially created in 1999 by Corinne Squire, Molly Andrews, and Shelly Day Scalter, all of whom at that time were situated in the programme of Psychosocial Studies. All three of us had in different contexts spent a lot of time listening to stories people told about their lives, and had positioned our work as psychologists who were concerned with the social and political world. It is ironic to think that in some ways we had Mrs. Thatcher and her introduction of the research excellence exercise, which later came to dominate much of academic life, to thank for our existence, as it helped us to create a justification for our very existence, as we could 'justify' our desire to build a research community in monetary terms. In the late 1990s there was a large student expansion at the university and workloads were very pressing. Research was very much backgrounded in this context, and we had neither postgraduate students nor sabbaticals. Nonetheless, we were able to organize a series of research seminars, and later workshops, postgraduate seminars, and short summer schools. At the same time, we were teaching the undergraduate module on Life Histories, so a synergy between the different levels of teaching, and bridge building between that and our research, began to develop. This aspect of incorporating teaching at all levels with the narrative scholarship of the centre has always been an important part of the work we see ourselves doing.

Review of van der Merwe & Gobodo-Madikizela (2007): Narrating Our Healing

Narrative Inquiry, Aug 15, 2008

Significant Differences

Routledge eBooks, Mar 10, 2016

This book should be of interest to students and teachers of psychology, sociology, women's st... more

From Margin to Centre? Practising New Forms of European Politics and Citizenship in the Calais ‘Jungle’

Psychoanalysis and its outsides: Review, books by Frosh and Parker

It has been a very interesting experience, and one that I would recommend, to read these books in... more

Book review: Stephanie Taylor, Narratives of Identity and Place. London: Routledge, 2010. 160 pp. $59.95,£ 32.50. ISBN 9780415480475 (hbk)

Feminism & Psychology, Jan 1, 2011

Narrating Our Healing

Narrative Inquiry, Jan 1, 2008

Narrative analysis: the constructionist approach

NB This paper is a draft. Please reference the chapter as published: Esin, C., Fathi, M., & Squi... more NB This paper is a draft. Please reference the chapter as published:

Esin, C., Fathi, M., & Squire, C. (2014). Narrative analysis: The constructionist approach. In U. Flick (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of qualitative data analysis. (pp. 203-217). London: SAGE Publications Ltd. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781446282243.n14

Narrative analysis is an analytical method that accommodates a variety of approaches.
Through these approaches, social researchers explore how people story their lives.
This is also a process through which researchers understand the complexities of
personal and social relations. Narrative analysis provides the researcher with useful
tools to comprehend the diversity and the different levels involved in stories, rather
than treating those stories simply as coherent, natural and unified entities (Andrews et
al., 2004). It is this approach to narrative analysis, which we shall call the
constructionist approach to narrative analysis, that we aim to explain in the chapter
that follows.

Interfaces in teaching narratives

Learning and Teaching …, Jan 1, 2011

This chapter is co-written by the three directors of the Centre for Narrative Research at the Uni... more This chapter is co-written by the three directors of the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London, UK and consists of their reflections on teaching narrative to post-graduate students in Britain. The organisation of the chapter is in three different voices, reflecting the design and teaching of the actual course. There is a general introduction about the course we teach: the genesis of the course, the use of formalisations in making sense of the field of narrative, connecting our classroom to our research centre (and to our own ...

Experiences of people living with HIV

HIV/AIDS in South Africa 25 Years On, Jan 1, 2009

Response to Commentaries by Antony Froggett and Paul Sepping

Group Analysis, Jan 1, 2005

Labov, W. (1972) Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Oxford: Bla... more

Stories of narrative research

by Corinne Squire and Margareta Hyden

Qualitative research …, Jan 1, 2004

Living counter-narratives

Qualitative research …, Jan 1, 2004

Women and men talk about aggression: an analysis of narrative

Standpoints and differences: Essays in the …, Jan 1, 1998

Body talk: the material and discursive regulation of …, Jan 1, 1997

Who's white? Television talk shows and representations of whiteness

Off white: readings on race, power and society. New …, Jan 1, 1997

Pragmatism, extravagance and feminist discourse analysis

Feminism and discourse: psychological …, Jan 1, 1995

Crisis what crisis? Discourses and narratives of the social in social psychology

Deconstructing social Psychology. London: Routledge, Jan 1, 1990

Situated selves, the coming-out genre and equivalent citizenship in narratives of HIV

The turn to biographical methods in social science: …, Jan 1, 2000

Feminism as antipsychology: learning and teaching in feminist psychology

Feminists and Psychological Practice, Jan 1, 1990

Feminist perspectives on psychology are transmitted to their widest audience through popular book... more Feminist perspectives on psychology are transmitted to their widest audience through popular books like My Mother/Myself , Fat is a Feminist Issue (Orbach, 1978), The Cinderella Complex and Women who Love too Much . To conventional psychologists, such texts' commitments to feminism, their populism and their largely psychodynamic orientation, make their methods unreliable and their conclusions of limited validity. More significantly for feminist psychology, these very successful texts are all, despite their superficial variability, 'how to' books, with therapeutic or self-improvement aims. They all belong to an ego-psychoanalytically influenced feminist psychology, which, because it is [77] concerned predominantly with personal change, skates over the social, economic, and political characteristics of gender relations, and neglects the irrational, fragmented and contradictory aspects of gendered subjectivities.

Looking Forward, Looking Back: Future Challenges for Narrative Research An event commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Centre for Narrative …

Narrative …, Jan 1, 2011

Abstract The Centre for Narrative Research was founded at the turn of the millenium. To commemora... more Abstract The Centre for Narrative Research was founded at the turn of the millenium. To commemorate its tenth anniversary, we organised an event which took place on November 10, 2010, at the Marx Memorial Library in London. The day had a very flexible format. We began with a few opening words from the three co-directors (Molly Andrews, Corinne Squire, and Maria Tamboukou) and the Research Fellow (Cigdem Esin) of CNR. This was followed by contributions from six leading narrative scholars (Jens Brockmeier, Michael Erben, ...

Tackling the problems of qualitatve research, a conversation

his paper comprises discussions from a residential symposium, "Methods in Dialogue", that took pl... more his paper comprises discussions from a residential symposium, "Methods in Dialogue", that took place near Cambridge, UK, in May 2005. The symposium concluded a series of seminars
organised by the London East Research Institute and the Centre for Narrative Research at the University of East London and supported by the Economic and Social Research Council. Public support for social research increasingly depends on its ability to deliver scientifically valid and reliable studies to guide policy and practice. The theoretical foundations of social research, however, seem to be in a critical state. Evidence generated by both qualitative and quantitative methods is more and more seen to be conflicting, open to many interpretations. The aim of the event was to bring together
qualitative researchers in the social sciences, many working in the field of narrative but also a number working with life history and auto/biography, discourse analysis, grounded theory, visual methods and ethnography, to discuss the theoretical foundations of qualitative social research. The discussions addressed narrative itself as an index case for methodological debate; methodological considerations
of objectivity and evidence, interpretation and context; appropriate levels of research focus and their
interactions; the role of dialogue between disciplines; and the interaction between social science and the wider environment of which it is a part. Questions such as: who and what is social research for, and whose voices does it represent? What are social researchers' and participants' interpretative
rights over their data and each other? How does thick description and the rich social interpretation it affords relate to the need for precise methods of explanation and generalizable conclusions? What special problems of research design or delivery arise when attempts are made to "empower"
informants, to enable them to interrogate, and even co-construct the research story?, were addressed
throughout the discussion.

Doing Narrative Research In Social Sciences

What is narrative research

Bruner, J. (1990) Acts of Meaning Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ... Elliott, J. (2005)... more

Approaches to Narrative Research

This paper outlines major social research perspectives on narrative, and proposes a pragmatics of... more This paper outlines major social research perspectives on narrative, and proposes a pragmatics of narrative research. Narratives are an increasingly popular focus of social research. The paper critically examines narrative focuses, from the microlevel of event narratives, through narratives of experience, to larger cultural narratives. It investigates methods that address narrative syntax, meanings, and contexts. It looks at ethics; data selection, gathering, transcribing and analysis; and the drawing of local and more general conclusions from narrative research. It also explores the theoretical assumptions operating, often implicitly, within narrative research perspectives. As well as drawing on key research texts in the field, the paper uses examples from the author's interview studies of people's stories of living with HIV. The paper ends with some study questions, and a list of primary readings.