ESW Open Seminar Series
CIRCLETS
Monday 14th May 2012, 5pm
Room 104, Fulton
Speaker
Professor Ann Phoenix, NOVELLA, National Centre for Research
Methods, Thomas Coram Research Unit, IoE, University of London
presents:
Adult narratives of ‘non-normative’ childhood experiences:
Using autobiography to claim liveable lives
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In this seminar, Professor Phoenix addresses the important but
neglected social issue of how adults from different family backgrounds
negotiate their identities as they remember and re-evaluate earlier
experiences.
Her research is based on findings from a project that studied the
narratives of adults with three sets of ‘non-normative’ childhood
experiences: (i) serial migrants from the Caribbean re-joining parents in
the UK, (ii) families of visibly mixed ethnicity and (iii) language brokers,
interpreting and/or translating for parents. Interviews with these
individuals explored how they were affected by what they felt ‘society’
thought of them and how they justified their own positioning. It was also
possible to elicit how narratives of social and emotional contexts and
experiences changed over time.
This seminar will contextualise and bring together the findings of the
three studies and consider the ways in which the participants drew on
constructed autobiographical memories of everyday family practices to
craft subjectivities, as well as what Judith Butler terms ‘liveable lives’.
* Refreshments available
** This seminar is available to join remotely by logging on to:
https//connectpro.sussex.ac.uk/circlets_phoenix14may2012