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*PLEASE NOTE NEW DATES June 20th-26th *
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Most easily read in RICH TEXT
Thirty- fifth
June 2013
Five-Day Training Intensive
in
Biographic-Narrative-Interpretive Method :
BNIM
Narrative Interview and Interpretation
5 days for 6 people:
STOP PRESS
UK academic staff only (not doctoral students, unfortunately)
can apply for a bursary for full cost from the NCRM
<http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/TandE/bursary/> http://www.ncrm.ac.uk/TandE/bursary/
2013 June 20th -21st , and then Monday-Wednesday June 24th to 26th
NOTE NEW DATES – ONE WEEK LATER
at
24a Princes Avenue, London N10 3LR
Muswell Hill, North London, United Kingdom
Even if you’ve had this message before, it’s still true!
Finding good methods for doing social research that is genuinely concerned
with the macro-societal, the meso-institutional and also with an informed
concern for subjectivity and 'the inner world' is not easy. One method of
doing such research is biographical-narrative interviewing, and one of the
different methodologies of doing such work is BNIM: the biographic-narrative
interpretive method.
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, tutor-backed,
immersion into principles and procedures that have been shown over two
decades and many countries to generate constantly high-quality work.
For over twelve years in the UK and in Ireland, as well as in Auckland (NZ),
Ljubljana (Slovenia), New York (USA), Sydney (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:
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.
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.
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.”
Already completed PhDs, clinical doctorates, and a few MA theses by
researchers using BNIM now number over 60 and we know of at least another
30 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.
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 cultures of innovative organisations;
Increasing numbers of post-doctoral funded collective research projects use
BNIM (details in the free BNIM Short Guide and Detailed Manual).
Anglophone universities involved include Auckland (NZ), Belfast, Birkbeck
College, Birmingham, Central Lancashire, Dublin (Ireland) , de Montfort,
East Anglia, East London, Essex, Exeter, National University of Ireland
(Ireland),, Idaho (USA), Indiana (USA), Kings College London, Leeds,
Leicester, Manchester, Massey (NZ), Middlesex, Oxford, Oxford Brookes,
Plymouth, Sussex, Queens University Belfast, Vilnius (Lithuania)
BNIM assumes that “narrative” expresses both conscious concerns and
unconscious cultural, societal, institutional and individual
presuppositions and processes. Integrally psycho-societal, it 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). Other books, articles, reports etc. are
listed in the Bibliography A 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 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, the free and constantly updated BNIM Short Guide
and Detailed Manual and the email list (currently around 400 strong) all
offer you 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 BNIM interpretation procedures.
Students develop a sense of how their own research projects might use such
aspects and components.
With two tutors (Tom Wengraf and Mariya Stoilova) , 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.
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 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-(self)-monitored practice to be successfully
achieved. Repeated 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’. 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.
After the course, post-course 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.
The tuition fees for the 5-day intensive training (including the important
post-course ‘initial support’ mentioned above) are earlybird £825 (or £925
afterwards) for the January 2013 – June 2013 courses. [Further Tutorial
Feedback up to the level of the Case-Account is now also available for those
who have completed the training]
.
CONTACT
For a free digital copy of the most recently updated version of the BNIM
Short Guide bound with the BNIM Detailed Manual, or
all other inquiries about BNIM,
please don’t hesitate to contact me at <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask]
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Best wishes
Tom
P.S. For news about hats, click on <http://www.katiawengraf.com/>
http://www.katiawengraf.com/
P.S. For news, photos and stuff about our women’s micro-credit and other
projects in South-West Uganda, look at our < <http://www.kiafrica.org/>
www.kiafrica.org>.
P.P. S. To those interested in social research using biographic narrative
interviews: For a free electronic copy of the current version of the BNIM
Short Guide and Detailed Manual, just write to <[log in to unmask]> .
Please indicate your institutional affiliation and the purpose for which you
might envisage using BNIM’s open-narrative interviews, and I'll send it
straight away. ('BNIM' stands for Biographic Narrative Interpretive
Method').
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