Eighteenth and Nineteenth

2008-9

5-Day Intensive BNIM Research Interview Trainings

Biographic-Narrative-Interpretive Method (BNIM) 

5 days for 6 people: 

 

November 6th-7th, 10th - 12th 2008

2009 – March 12th and 13th, 16th – 18th.

 

The value of open-narrative interviewing and insightful interpretation is
widely recognised, but rather than having to invent the wheel for
themselves, many people welcome a systematic immersion into principles and
procedures that have been shown over two decades and many countries to
generate high-quality work. An excerpt from an email we received from one
university may be suggestive:

 

“… a number of the trainees who graduated this year got top awards in their
doctorate projects... BNIM and narrative projects were considered to be of a
particularly high standard by both internal and external examiners, and were
very well received.  The course director was very impressed and has told me
that the standard of the research of those undertaking these projects (using
BNIM) has improved the standard of the whole cohort.”

 

For over nine years in the UK, and more recently in New York (USA), in
Auckland (NZ),   Ljubljana (Slovenia), and Sydney (Australia), we have been
running BNIM intensive trainings designed for PhD students and postdoctoral
researchers in various pure and applied  fields. Comments include:

Recently completed PhDs and clinical doctorates by researchers using BNIM
range over topics such as: reintegration of returning Guatemalan refugees;
identity in informal care; men coping with sexual abuse; psychosomatic study
of breast cancer; love and intimacy; motivation in occupational therapy;
South African migrants to NZ; nurses’ and health visitors’ learning and
their professional practices; relationship experiences in psychosis (such as
those of, and with,  hearing voices people) and hospitalisation,. We know of
18 more PhDs, clinical doctorates and research projects in process.
Anglophone universities involved include Birkbeck College, Birmingham,
Central Lancashire, Dublin, de Montfort, East Anglia, East London, Essex,
Exeter, Idaho, Kings College London, Leeds, Leicester, Massey, Oxford,
Oxford Brookes, Plymouth.

 

BNIM assumes that “narrative” expresses both conscious concerns and
unconscious cultural, societal and individual presuppositions and processes.
Integrally psycho-societal, it supports research into the lived experience
and reflexivity of individuals and collectives, facilitating understanding
both the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’ worlds of ‘historically-evolving
persons-in-historically-evolving situations’, and particularly the
expectedly surprising interactivity of inner and outer world dynamics.  It
especially serves researchers who need a tool that supports understanding
spanning sociological and psychological dynamics and structures, and these
treated not statically but as situated, affected and active historically and
biographically. 

Such research provides an innovative base for policy review and for better
policy and professional or activist practice.

When you do the course, you automatically become a member of the
<Biographic-narrative-BNIM> email list where news, questions and discussion
circulate. Methodology can be lonely without a secure base and like-minded
people working in the same way as you. The course, the textbook, the Short
Guide and the email list offer you support in using part or all of the BNIM
tool-kit in your own work.


Summary 


Designed for PhD students and professional researchers, the course provides
a thorough training in doing BNIM biographic narrative interviews, together
with ‘hands-on experience’ of following BNIM interpretation procedures.
Students develop a sense of how their own research projects might use such
aspects  and components. The 2008 earlybird cost is £650 if paid in full by
February  October 15th. If paid later, the 2008 cost is £750. Taught by Tom
Wengraf and Caroline Barratt in Muswell Hill, North London,  the course’s
small number of students ensures close coaching and support for the
intensive work that is needed for you to fully acquire both the
understanding of  principles and also the practical capacity for  proceeding
with the  systematic procedures involved in BNIM – usable both for BNIM  but
also  for other types of  narrative interviewing and interpretation.
 

Programme (subject to revision) for 5-day intensives

Thursday  and Friday

We start with a short introduction to the Biographic-narrative-interpretive
method,  the history of its development, and to the principles behind its
practice. The  point and timing of  using  open-ended biographic narrative
interviews rather than (only) the more conventional semi-structured and
attitude-and-argument focused ones is clarified.  You get to see the value
of the 3 quite different subsessions. The bulk of the first two days is then
almost entirely devoted to learning the craft of  BNIM interviewing
practice. This involves  learning to  ask  narrative-pointed questions (both
open and also focused) and not inadvertently interrupting or deflecting the
interviewee. Apparently simple, it rapidly becomes clear that such a craft
requires repeated and carefully-monitored practice to be successfully
achieved.  Pencil-and-paper and repeated interview practice exercises ensure
such success is achieved by the end of the 2nd day.   

 

 Monday  to Wednesday 

We outline the principles and you engage in  the  key practices of BNIM
interpretive work . We explain the importance of the twin interpretive
tracks of ‘living of the lived life’ and ‘telling of the told story’
analysis, and micro-analysis,  and how you convert the raw transcript into
two series of processed data for each track. You learn the significance of
the future-blind chunk-by-chunk approach peculiar to BNIM by practice – by
doing parts of a narrative text analysis, a  micro-analysis  and
biographical data analysis.  You see the value of bringing the separated
tracks together in an integrated ‘case account’. Finally, on the basis of
case-presentations, you practice systematic case-comparison and the
generalising and particularising modelling towards which BNIM work is
typically oriented. The course ends with our looking again at how you might
best use all or part of the BNIM approach within your individual research
projects, and, given the existence of sceptical research and applied policy
audiences,  how to defend your choice to use such an in-depth biographical
research method with a necessarily low-N sample. After the course, to help
you avoid un-necessary errors, we advise on your eventual design of a SQUIN
for your first pilot BNIM pilot interview, and then – if you wish --
comment on your transcript and then on your data-processing of that
transcript for subsequent interpretation.  

 

For an  example of BNIM case studies we recommend the European Union
seven-country SOSTRIS project (edited) Biography and social exclusion in
Europe: experiences and life-journeys (2002: Bristol, Policy Press).  Other
books, articles and reports are listed in the full bibliographies of the
Short Guide to BNIM. 

To get the 2008 early-bird discount, you need to pay a total of £650 before
the 15th  day of the month before the month in which the course runs (by
15th  October for November).  Otherwise, the 2008 cost then rises to £750.
Reserve early, pay early: make sure of getting a place, pay less!  

In 2009 the course will run on March 12th-13th and 16th-18th.  The cost will
be £725 if paid before 1st February 2009; otherwise the cost rises to £825.


All inquiries and bookings, and requests for the current version of the
Guide to BNIM , please send an email BOTH to  <mailto:[log in to unmask]>