All welcome! Please forward to colleagues and students who may be interested.


There will be a London Underground strike on May 6 but the Institute of Education is in easy walking distance of Kings Cross, Euston, and St Pancras mainline stations, and is also well served by buses. Please see http://www.notrog.plus.com/busroutes/placesindex/russellsquare.htm for buses serving Russell Square.

                                                     Graduate Seminars in
Narrative Research
  The NOVELLA ESRC Research Node, Institute of Education, and
 the Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London

‘Environment’ as a way into exploring children’s narratives of self and space: emerging analyses from fieldwork in India and the UK
Catherine Walker, Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education
Tuesday May 6th, 5.00-6.30
The Library, Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education,
University of London, 27-8 Woburn Square, London WC1H OAA

In this presentation, I draw upon my analysis of data generated with 11-12 year old children and their families living in different socioeconomic and environmental contexts in Andhra Pradesh, India and the UK to consider how children understand and talk about their environments and themselves as present and future inhabitants of these environments. My starting point in my research is to explore children’s everyday lives and what is important to them in the spaces that make up their environments in the present, in this measure, paying attention to environment in a ‘mundane’ sense. A further layer is to consider if and how broader socio-environmental processes discursively organised under the umbrella term ‘climate change’ are affecting children’s everyday lives, through paying attention to how children themselves bring (or not) talk about and motifs of climate change into their talk of everyday life in their environments and how these are changing. Attending to data generated with two children living in contrasting environments, a key question that I will consider in this presentation is how children talk about the particular spaces of the home and immediate surrounding area as safe or threatened by environmental hazards such as air and sound pollution and the destruction of green spaces. In addressing this question, I seek to show how a narrative analysis of data is helpful in highlighting the intimate ways that self and space are tied up in both mundane and discursive talk about environment.
Catherine Walker is a third year doctoral student based at the Thomas Coram Research Unit, IOE. Through secondary analysis and primary data collection in India and the UK, Catherine’s research aims to explore the environmental conditions, ideals and practices of a small number of 11-12 year old children and their families in India and the UK, with attention to how children in different social classes and rural and urban areas make sense of environmental ideals and how these relate to their everyday lives and imagined futures. Catherine’s PhD research is linked to ‘Family Lives and the Environment’, a constituent project of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Node ‘NOVELLA’ (Narratives of Varied Everyday Life and Linked Approaches). For more information, please see www.novella.ac.uk<http://www.novella.ac.uk/>
All welcome, especially graduate students.  For further details contact Corinne Squire ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) or Ding Ding ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> ). Details are also on the CNR website: http://www.uel.ac.uk/cnr/home.htm . Booking via NCRM: http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/training/show.php?article=4429