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Twenty-third to twenty-sixth
5-Day Intensive Trainings
Biographic-Narrative-Interpretive Method :BNIM
Narrative Interview and Interpretation
5 days for 6 people:
2010
January 21st -22nd and 25th to 27th; or
March 11th-12th, and 15th to 17th; or
June 17th -18th, and 21st to 23rd or
October 7th and 8th, and 11th to 13th
Muswell Hill, North London, UK
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 textbook-backed immersion into
principles and procedures that have been shown over two decades and many
countries to generate constantly 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 ten years in the UK and in Ireland, and more recently in Auckland
(NZ), Ljubljana (Slovenia), New York (USA) Sydney (Australia), we have
been running BNIM intensive trainings designed for PhD students and for
postdoctoral researchers (both individuals and research teams) in various
pure and applied fields. Comments include:
Elvin – A richness beyond what I could imagine.
Sasha - thank you, for a wonderful training course. I learnt so much - and
it was a great experience for us all as a team, and in terms of all of our
intellectual and skills development.
Mark – I could go away and practice now. I liked the balance of how and why.
I really got my head round that and could explain it to someone else.
Completed PhDs, clinical doctorates, and MA theses by researchers using
BNIM now number about 30. We know of at least another 30 PhDs, clinical
doctorates and post-doctoral research projects in process.
A few of the topics covered: 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;
nurses’ and health visitors’ learning and their professional practices;
relationship experiences in psychosis (such as those of, and with, hearing
voices people) and hospitalisation; migration experiences; female aboriginal
head teachers in Australia; students on different t types of degree
programme; treatment decisions around and experiences of the elderly in two
hospitals; fishing practices in Uganda
Anglophone universities involved include Auckland, Birkbeck College,
Birmingham, Central Lancashire, Dublin, de Montfort, East Anglia, East
London, Essex, Exeter, NUI-Galway, Idaho, Kings College London, Leeds,
Leicester, Massey, Oxford, Oxford Brookes, Plymouth, Queens University
(Belfast). In addition, increasing numbers of post-doctoral funded
collective research projects use BNIM (details in the BNIM Short Guide and
Detailed Manual).
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.
For some examples of BNIM case studies, see maybe the European Union
7-country SOSTRIS project Biography and social exclusion in Europe:
experiences and life-journeys (2002: Bristol, Policy Press). Other books,
articles etc. are listed in the bibliography of the BNIM Short Guide (and
Detailed Manual), electronic copy free on request.
BNIM research provides an innovative base for policy review and for better
policy, and for 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. Innovative and advanced methodology can be lonely without a
secure base and contact with like-minded people working in the same way as
you. The course, the textbook, the free Short Guide and Detailed Manual and
the email list all offer you support in using part or all of the BNIM
tool-kit in your own work and for liaising with others.
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.
Taught by Tom Wengraf and Caroline Barratt, the 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.
You will be expected to have looked at (not read!) chapters 6 and 12 of
Tom’s textbook, Qualitative research interviewing: biographic narrative and
semi-structured method (2001: Sage Publications). Before the course starts,
you are expected to have studied some bits and scanned others of the most
recent version of the BNIM Short Guide and Detailed Manual which will be
sent to your email address. Your previous preparing-by-reading means that
most of your time during the 5 days can be spent on clarification and
practical exercises, learning-by-doing-and-discussing.
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 you start your work, to help you avoid unnecessary errors, we advise
on your eventual design of a SQUIN for your first pilot BNIM pilot
interview, and then – if you wish -- give feedback on your transcript and
then on your initial data-processing of that transcript for subsequent
interpretation. The training itself costs £750 early-bird rate for whichever
5 day course you choose, and the cost includes the post-course ‘support for
self-training’ mentioned above.
CONTACT
To apply for a place (there aren’t many), please contact
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask]
For a free copy of the most recently updated version of the BNIM Short Guide
and Detailed Manual, or other inquiries about BNIM, please contact
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask]
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