The Centre for Narrative Research

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, post-graduate 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. One of the things we originally focused on was a series of intensive one day workshops, exploring topics such as ‘Education and Narrative’, ‘Politics and Narrative’ ‘Sexuality and Narrative’ ‘Refuge Narratives’ and more. These proved to be rather exhilarating gatherings, and they formed the basis for our first edited book, Lines of Narrative. While we focused our efforts on creating a scholarly and creative space for narrative work, we were nonetheless building on what had come before us at UEL, particularly in Psychosocial Studies, Sociology and Cultural Studies. Indeed we have found throughout the two decades of our existence, there has always been a strong sense of collaboration with our colleagues from many different disciplines. For us, the term ‘narrative’ was a placeholder for concerns with qualitative research, language, and research context and effects, that could bring together colleagues from different subject areas and schools. ‘Narrative’ was thus a contingent term, not an agenda. Within a few years of creating CNR, Maria Tamboukou arrived at UEL, very quickly she becoming an integral part of the centre. (Around this time, Shelley Day Sclater left UEL). We decided that we would have three co-directors of the centre, (Squire, Andrews and Tamboukou) and this structure of feminist co-leadership has remained ever since. Often we were asked by the university who was the ‘real’ director, as they had difficulty computing that three people could lead a centre collaboratively. We refused their efforts to place us within their expected management structure, and even had a triple professorial inaugural together. Cigdem Esin, who began as CNR’s PhD student, eventually became a co-director, interjecting her creative energy and passion into many aspects of our work. Maria Tamboukou had developed the idea for an annual conference for postgraduate narrative students, open to students from any university, called ‘to think is to experiment.’ The organization for this event, now running nearly 15 years, was eventually turned over to Cigdem Esin. Aura Lounasmaa joined CNR as a Research Fellow in 2014 (is this right?) and has been an integral part of the ‘narrative sisterhood’ since that time, leading on many of the projects connected to our engagement with refugee issues. (See, for instance, https://theconversation.com/lessons-in-the-calais-jungle-teaching-life-stories-and-learning-abouthumanity-67095) What was the experience like? What values drove it? Having outlined briefly how CNR was first formed, and subsequently developed over the twenty years of its existence, we now turn to the more intangible question of what the experience was like for us and what values frame the work we have done. As this book demonstrates, we were at the tail end of an important time in the history of the university, where there were countless examples of innovative and sometimes even radical ways of teaching and doing research which were being not only promoted but also practiced by many of our colleagues across the university. While not aware of all of these at the time – something which has become much more apparent in retrospect, and in preparing this book – we were nonetheless clear that we were part of something much bigger than ourselves. Thus we were not only part of the wave now referred to as ‘the turn to narrative’, but also within our own institution, there was much interest in and collegial (if not institutional) support for the kind of work we were doing. We have been asked to describe the values which drove what we did. While difficult to pinpoint these precisely, five broad areas emerge as being particularly important. Process – As with many political projects, at its core was not only a concern with the content but rather the process by which we operated. It has already been mentioned that our feminist co-leadership defied the expectations of the university, and troubled their box-ticking exercises. Nonetheless, it was always clear to us that this was not only a preferable way to operate, but for us the only way. While we tried to extend this organic process to anyone interested in the centre, we had less success in this. While we always held AGMs and tried to connect these with receptions in hopes of attracting people who would like to contribute their ideas for future events, in fact what mostly happened is few people attended and those who did for the most part were content simply to hear an overall summary of what we had done the previous year and our forthcoming plans. Internationalism – The spirit of CNR has always been very international, as indicated by both the nationality and the research interests of its co-directors, members, visiting scholars and postgraduate students. Moreover, we have always sought to address ourselves to an international community. One effective means of reaching researchers from outside of the UK has been through our elist, which has grown through to the years to include more than 1000 narrative scholars situated around the word. We also ensure that our postgraduate module, Narrative Research, is available online, and have whenever possible endeavored to reduce fees for students when necessary. Finally, the recent focus of many CNR activities has been connected to the refugee crisis, and invariably this means that we endeavor to collaborate with others both within and beyond the UK who share this commitment. ‘Educating Without Borders’ https://educatingwithoutborders.wordpress.com/ is representative of this spirit of internationalism and collaboration to which we are dedicated. Intergenerational – The co-directors of the Centre for Narrative Research have always regarded our work as fundamentally building on the scholarship and political engagement of many of those who were established academics long before us (some of whom are contributors to this volume); equally, we believe it is our duty to provide the necessary support and skills to enable our younger colleagues and students to flourish as scholars in their own right. As already mentioned, this means that our teaching extends to all levels of higher education, and we are proud that one of our co-directors began her association with CNR as our PhD student. Similarly, we have had undergraduate students from our Life Histories module carry on to do PhDs with us, and then to become professionally established in their own right. Some students enrolled in our postgraduate modules or summer school have returned to their own countries and established narrative networks with whom we are closely affiliated. In this way, the ‘family’ of CNR has grown exponentially through the decades of its existence, and annual gatherings at ‘to think is to experiment’ can sometimes take on the feeling of a reunion. Multidisciplinary – CNR has always regarded itself as an umbrella organization which brings together a wide range of narrative work. It supports research on spoken, written and visual narratives and draws from psychological, sociological, anthropological and cultural studies research traditions. CNR members work on issues that include 'race', racism and ethnicities; multilingualism; young masculinities; sexual abuse; popular culture; e-culture; ageing; the ‘thirtysomething’ generation; political engagement; teaching and education; clinical practice and artistic practice. Working beyond the academy - CNR has sought to adopt a broad conceptualization of what constitutes ‘legitimate’ academic work, regarding its remit as including but extending beyond the academy. Thus we have collaborated with artists, photographers, gerontologists, therapists, and been associated with numerous public exhibitions. An example of this is Chila Kumari Burman’s 2009 Leverhulme Artist in Residence at CNR, in which she developed a project ‘You Are Here: East London Self-Portraits’ , investigating students’ visual and verbal self-representations across a range of East London environments. Burman worked with social science students and staff to explore autobiographical materials and ideas visually, drawing on students’ academic work, personal histories, and social and political understanding. Recent work with refugees has involved photography, art and poetry workshops and been open to the public. Although CNR co-directors and members publish extensively in international, peer-reviewed journals, they have also, for instance, co-edited Voices from the ‘Jungle, a collection of life stories written by residents of the Calais refugee camp, most of whom had been engaged with the Life Stories short university course taught by persons affiliated with CNR in Calais. Vision for the Future 2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of the creation of the Centre for Narrative Research. While we feel proud of the things we have been able to build together with colleagues in these years, we are also acutely aware of the effects of the attacks on higher education in the UK. Corinne can you write this, including stuff you have done on future of the university, etc? As we write, we contemplate the meaning of radicalism in the university sector. Perhaps more poignantly, we ask ourselves is what we were able to do over these two decades ‘radical’? We know that we have been fortunate to be academics at a certain period of time, when there was flexibility in the system to create new and innovative ways to pursue the topics of our interest. We also know that those doors did not open for us; often it felt that we had to push very hard to have them open, but open they did. We feel fortunate that we were able to transcend traditional boundaries between the academy and the ‘real world’, to collaborate with colleagues from a vast array of disciplines, and to feel part of an international community. All the while, we were able to advance in our own academic careers. For this and much more we know we are lucky. We know, too, that younger scholars are launching their careers in a very difficult culture. Our vision for the etc etc