Eighteenth
and Nineteenth
2008-9
5-Day Intensive
BNIM Research Interview Trainings
Biographic-Narrative-Interpretive
Method (BNIM)
5 days
for 6 people:
2008. November
6th-7th,
10th - 12th
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
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.
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
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 free Short Guide and the email list offer you
support in using part or all of the BNIM
tool-kit in your own work.
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 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.
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 Short
Guide to BNIM which will be sent to your email address. This preparing-by-reading
means that most of your time during the 5 days can be spent on clarification
and practical exercises, learning-by-doing.
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 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 free
electronic Short Guide to BNIM.
To reserve a place. To reserve a place, you need to send us a deposit of £225.
Places are reserved in strict order of deposits (or full payment)
received.
2008. To get the 2008 early-bird discount, you need to pay a total of £650 before the 1st day of the month before the month in which the course
runs (i.e. by 1st October
for November). Otherwise, the 2008
cost then rises to £750.
Reserve early, pay early: make sure
of getting a place, pay less!
2009. In 2009 the course will run on March
12th-13th and 16th-18th. The cost
will be £725 if paid in full 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
contact [log in to unmask].
Best wishes
Tom
P.S. For a fun list, click on www.dothegreenthing.com
P.P.S. For a free electronic copy of the most recent version of the Short Guide to the biographic-narrative interpretive
method of research interviewing for lived experience, just click on <[log in to unmask]>
. Indicate your institutional affiliation and the purpose for which you might
envisage using open narrative interviews, and I'll send it straight away.
P.P.P.S. To think about doing 'voluntourism work' in a
project we're developing in rural