Dear Jeff,

Thanks for your note about doing the 5-day BNIM training in June 2009.  I
attach a copy of the current 'Guide to BNIM' but the chances are that with
ongoing trainings and research experiences, the 2009 version should be
further improved!

Can you tell me for what research purpose you might envisage using BNIM?

Best wishes
 
Tom 
 
P.S. On a quite different note, for a quick look at a / community tourism /
study trip /  venture in Uganda, click on www.kiafrica.org>.  
 
P.P.S. If you are interested using narrative interviews in social research,
you can get a free electronic copy of the updated version of the 'Guide to
Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method' by writing to me, indicating your
institutional affiliation and what you might use such narrative interviews
for, and I'll send you the updated current version right back.
[log in to unmask] 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Performative Social Science [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Jeff Friedman
Sent: 22 January 2008 02:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: BNIM trainings in BIOGRAPHIC-NARRATIVE INTERPRETIVE METHOD
London 2008

Tom

I'm interested in your training, but will be planning to be in the UK in
June 2009.  So please keep my address on your list and keep me posted for
next calendar's offerings.

thanks,
Jeff Friedman
Rutgers University

> If you are interested in eliciting accounts of lived experience of
> people's
> lives and the situations they have passed through or are grappling with,
> you
> may be interested in BNIM training. Do contact me if you have any
> questions.
> A free electronic 'Guide to BNIM' is available on request. Tom.
>   _____
>
>
> Fifteenth to Eighteenth
>
> (March,  June,  November 2008, March 2009)
>
> 5-Day Intensive BNIM Research Interview Trainings
>
> Biographic-Narrative-Interpretive Method (BNIM)
>
> 5 days for 6 people:
>
> March  13th and 14th, and 17th to 19th ;
>
> June 12th-13th, 16th to 18th; or…November 6th and 7th, 10th-12th; or 2009
> March 12th-13th, and 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:
>
>
>
> Elvin – A richness beyond what I could imagine.
>
>
>
> Sian – Well-balanced, with just enough of each step. It was nice to have a
> number of little thresholds. I like the emphasis on own research, and
> having
> lots of time for reflection.
>
>
>
> 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 and clinical doctorates in process.  Anglophone universities
> involved include Birmingham, Central Lancashire, Dublin, de Montfort, East
> Anglia, East London, Essex, Exeter, 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 and affected 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 1st [May 1st; October 1st].  If paid later, the 2008 cost is
> £750.
> Taught by Prue Chamberlayne and Tom Wengraf 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 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)
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>  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
> constantly updated Short Guide to BNIM.
>
>
>
> To get a copy of the most recent version of the free Short Guide to BNIM,
> to ask any questions or to book a place, contact
> <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask]
>
> To reserve a place, you need to send us a deposit of £200.
>
> 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 of February for the course running in March).  Otherwise, the 2008
> cost
> then rises to £750.  Reserve early, pay early: make sure of getting a
> place,
> pay less!
>
>