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HELLLO!
! FORTY-THIRD !
JANUARY 2017
Five-Day Training Intensive
in the
Biographic-Narrative-Interpretive Method
BNIM
Narrative Interview and Interpretation
2017 Thursday-Friday, Monday-Tuesday: January 26-7, 30-31
and then Wednesday February 1st.
at
24a Princes Avenue, London N10 3LR
Muswell Hill, North London, United Kingdom
Finding good methods for doing social research that are genuinely concerned on the one hand with the macro-societal and with the meso-institutional on the one hand and, on the other, with subjectivity(ies) and ' inner worlds' ….
… and where you can shift your focus on this spectrum and explore back and forwards connections between the two …. is not easy.
One method of doing such psycho-societal research is biographical-narrative interviewing, and one of the different methodologies of doing such interviewing is BNIM: the biographic-narrative interpretive method.
The value of open-narrative interviewing and insightful systematic interpretation is widely recognised, but rather than having to invent the wheel for themselves, many people welcome a systematic textbook-backed, tutor-backed, on-line supported, practical immersion into principles and procedures-for-practice that have been shown over two decades and across many countries and areas of work to generate constantly high-quality work.
The BNIM 5-day Intensive Training
For over fifteen years in the UK and in Ireland, as well as in Auckland (New Zealand), Ljubljana (Slovenia), New York (USA), Sydney (Australia), Wagga-Wagga (Australia) , Grand Canaries (Spain), Coimbra (Portugal) we have been running BNIM intensive trainings designed for PhD students and for postdoctoral researchers (both individuals and also research teams) for use in various pure and applied fields. Comments include:
…such brilliant training and such hospitality and collegiality during the week. I really, really appreciate it. I feel that I benefitted immensely from the training.
I felt that the whole event was so well put together, there was so much advice being given (and just the right amount) with lots of practical hints as well.
It really made me confident about trusting my instincts with research and with BNIM in general and about developing my own ideas about ‘what works’ in a practical sense while staying within the main parameters of the method.
There was also a good level of theoretical discussion and given that we have diverse research interests and are at different levels with projects, I felt that the whole thing worked well
(Lisa Moran May 2014)
Elvin – A richness beyond what I could imagine.
Ian - Your course (that I suggested one of our PhD students attend) was one of the most enjoyable experiences (and intense!) I have had
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.
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.
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.”
Indicators of spread and success
Already completed PhDs, clinical doctorates, and a few MA theses by researchers using BNIM now number over 80, and we know of at least another 20 PhDs, clinical doctorates and post-doctoral research projects in process. There may well be others. The trend is rising sharply. 23 (three per year) were submitted in the eight years between 2001 and 2009; but 30 more (10 per year) were submitted just in the three years between 2009 and 2011. (???who says qualitative researchers take no account of numbers and can’t count? Well, OK, I haven’t checked the most recent figures, but in 2014 one new BNIM output was published on average every 10 days.).
A very few of the topics covered: the culture of motor bikers; reintegration of returning Guatemalan refugees; identity in informal care; men coping with sexual abuse; psychoanalytic 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; female aboriginal head teachers in Australia; students on different types of degree and training programmes; fishing practices in Uganda, treatment decisions around and experiences of the elderly in hospitals; memories of wars, military occupations, and massacres; midwife experiences; children in orphanages, intergenerational transmission; the workings of debt in the everyday lives of ordinary workers, motivations for new entry into dairy-farming; the cultures of innovative organisations.
Increasing numbers of post-doctoral funded collective research projects use BNIM (details in the BNIM Short Guide and Detailed Manual).
Anglophone universities involved include Auckland (NZ), Belfast, Birkbeck College, Birmingham, Central Lancashire, Charles Sturt (Australia), Dublin (Ireland) , de Montfort, East Anglia, East London, Essex, Exeter, National University of Ireland (Galway), Idaho (USA), Indiana (USA), Kings College London, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Massey (New Zealand),), Middlesex, Oxford, Oxford Brookes, Plymouth, Sussex, Queens University Belfast.
Assumptions and uses of BNIM
BNIM assumes that “narrative” expresses both conscious concerns and unconscious cultural, societal, institutional and individual presuppositions and processes. Integrally psycho-societal, BNIM interprets discourse and interview expression to support research into the lived experience and reflexivity of individuals and collectives, situated subjectivity, facilitating an integrative 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 want to think psycho-societally and who need a tool that supports understanding spanning macro-sociological, meso-institutional and psychological dynamics and structures, and these treated not statically or separately but as situated, affected and active historically and biographically.
For some examples of BNIM case studies, some in areas with which you might well be concerned, see maybe the European Union 7-country SOSTRIS project Biography and social exclusion in Europe: experiences and life-journeys (2002: Bristol, Policy Press).
A multitude of other books, articles, reports etc. are listed in the (available on request) Bibliography A of the BNIM Short Guide (and Detailed Manual)
BNIM research provides an innovative base for psycho-societally-grounded policy review and for better policy, and similarly for professional practice and the upgrading of existing theory and case-description practices.
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, this free BNIM Quick Sketch (with Bibliography), the constantly updated BNIM Short Guide and Detailed Manual , and the dedicated email list (currently around 450 strong) all offer you initial and ongoing support in using part or all of the BNIM tool-kit in your own work and for liaising with others.
Summary of the 5-day BNIM-intensive
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 the systematic BNIM case- interpretation procedures. Students develop a sense of how their own research projects might use such aspects and components.
With two tutors (Tom Wengraf and Deborah Rodriguez) , we ensure 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 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 can be spent on clarification and practical exercises during the 5 days, learning-by-doing-and-discussing and then rectifying your practice.
Programme (subject to revision) for 5-day intensives
Thursday and Friday - interviewing
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 sub-sessions. 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-(self)-monitored practice to be successfully achieved. To do this you will interview other trainees and be interviewed by them. Repeated short interview practice exercises and discussion ensure such success is achieved before the end of the 2nd day.
Monday to Wednesday – interpreting , and theorising from cases
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’ grounded in a synthesising history of the case-evolution. Finally, on the basis of case-presentations, you practice systematic case-comparison and the generalising and particularising theorising 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, either on its own or as part of a multi-method approach. We think about its use for evaluating existing ‘interventions in context’ and for designing new one…..
One 15-minute practice BNIM interviews shortly before the 5 days, and one shortly afterwards, + free feedback
Shortly before the course, we recommend that you do a short 15 minute BNIM interview, just to get a feel for the method. This is not evaluated but, if you get it together to try it out, you learn a lot from preparing in this way.
After the course, post-course test and further support. To help you avoid unnecessary errors when you start to practice BNIM yourself, we continue to advise on your eventual design of an open-narrative question (the SQUIN) for your pilot interviews, and then – if you wish – we give feedback on your first transcript and then on its initial data-processing for subsequent interpretation.
One month after the training, we invite you to submit your Test-Practice Interview for feedback and support. By doing such a Test-Practice BNIM interview in the month after the end of the Training, or thereabouts, you will find that it consolidates your learning and you get tutorial feedback on what you have done well and what you need next time to do (often subtly) in a slight but significant different way.
It is very important for you that you do such a short Test-Practice Interview (usually about 20 minutes) and send the Transcript and your Reflective Notes for quick feedback.
The BNIM Detailed Manuals (constantly updated) are very powerful resources for post-course reference and clarification of questions that arise in your post-course practice. They are free to all those who follow a Training Intensive.
Course Costs
The tuition fees for the 5-day intensive training (including the important post-course support mentioned above) are earlybird £825 before December 1st 2016 (or £925 afterwards).
[Further Tutorial Feedback up to the level of the Case-Account is also now possible, normally for those who have completed the 5-day intensive]
The six places tend to go quite quickly, so please don’t leave contacting us too late.
CONTACT
For information about the most recently updated version of the Electronic Package
containing the BNIM Short Guide bound with the BNIM Detailed Manuals, plus free tuition
And for all other inquiries about BNIM,
please don’t hesitate to contact me at [log in to unmask]