Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1500 titles.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
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Stories of the lived experience of suffering or injustice can be powerful vehicles for building empathy and insight into the stigma, shame, pain and indignity of others. Stories can create a foundation on which experiential learning builds. But just as stories can draw us into proximity with each other, they can also cast a spell of mystique or exoticism. When stories evoke discomfort, or challenge our sense of how things should be, they can create distance between ‘us’ (listeners) and ‘them’ (story-holders). Stories about the lived experience of having been locked up, incarcerated, punished – for doing the wrong thing – can be such a place where imagination and indignation collide. This chapter explores this rocky narrative terrain between empathy and antipathy in the context of teaching undergraduate criminology students about the harms of imprisonment and the challenges and possibilities of penal abolition.
Working on a creative research narrative of your own family is challenging, especially if it includes memories of war, forced migration, grief and resilience. How do you illustrate a multifaceted representation of your parents when your short story is about one life-threatening event? How do you ask interview questions, knowing it always affects your loved ones? This chapter explores two challenges involved in developing the author’s creative graphic narrative book. These include the impact of telling untellable stories and the dilemma of ‘ethical’ data collection with family members.
Based on the author’s experiences writing a graphic novel about the effect of events of 1971, when East Pakistan became Bangladesh and her Urdu-speaking family migrated to West Pakistan, this chapter draws upon Marianne Hirsch’s discussion around post-memory, and Ananya Jahanara Kabir’s approach towards post-amnesia to discuss complex memory work. The chapter also discusses the toll of emotional labour, intergenerational trauma, and strength through reflections on this creative project.
Narrative Research Now addresses timely concerns about the politics of representation and the ethics of storytelling; topics that are crucial to narrative research and to broader audiences interested in the power of stories. In a time of contested realities and a renewed focus on the power of personal stories, narrative research is as relevant as ever. But ironically it is sometimes seen as a naive approach that champions people’s testimonies at all costs. The idea that stories and storytelling matter is widely accepted, yet critical engagement with such stories remains rare. In part, this is because narrative research has not always been up to the task of unpacking issues of power and representation. Indeed, while narrative has been praised for ‘giving voice’ and highlighting how individuals make sense of the social world, critics are starting to question which voices are being heard, or allowed to speak, and which experiences are made to count. Narrative Research Now picks up on these questions as it seeks to scrutinise the continued value of narrative and suggest a new agenda for narrative research in contemporary times. The book is arranged into three cross-cutting themes that reflect significant points of tension in the field – institutional authority and counter-stories; tellable and untellable stories; and the ethics of representation. With these themes, the chapters take on important concerns such as an attention to the ethics, power dynamics, and the politics of storytelling in a social world.
This chapter draws on the case study of an oral history life narrative of an elderly woman to consider the ethical responsibilities of oral historians recording the stories of people with dementia. Using a pseudonym, Joan’s story raises important questions about how we respect a narrator’s wish to be heard at a time when they are often regarded as ‘unreliable narrators’ by the people closest to them. Joan’s memories of a traumatic event do not accord with the people who now have authority to speak on her behalf. Do they have the right to stop her from speaking out? If people find the courage to tell ‘untellable stories’ later in life, who are we, who follow them, to deny them their truth?
Narrative Research Now addresses timely concerns about the politics of representation and the ethics of storytelling; topics that are crucial to narrative research and to broader audiences interested in the power of stories. In a time of contested realities and a renewed focus on the power of personal stories, narrative research is as relevant as ever. But ironically it is sometimes seen as a naive approach that champions people’s testimonies at all costs. The idea that stories and storytelling matter is widely accepted, yet critical engagement with such stories remains rare. In part, this is because narrative research has not always been up to the task of unpacking issues of power and representation. Indeed, while narrative has been praised for ‘giving voice’ and highlighting how individuals make sense of the social world, critics are starting to question which voices are being heard, or allowed to speak, and which experiences are made to count. Narrative Research Now picks up on these questions as it seeks to scrutinise the continued value of narrative and suggest a new agenda for narrative research in contemporary times. The book is arranged into three cross-cutting themes that reflect significant points of tension in the field – institutional authority and counter-stories; tellable and untellable stories; and the ethics of representation. With these themes, the chapters take on important concerns such as an attention to the ethics, power dynamics, and the politics of storytelling in a social world.
Feminist researchers emphasise the ethical importance of co-production of knowledge with research participants. Sharing the narratives of participants, especially those from vulnerable or marginalised groups whose voices are often sidelined or silenced, is also an important, higher-order feminist ethical choice for advocacy and so other women can potentially find meaning and inspiration in the journeys of their peers. However, such research involves risks to participants that institutionalised informed consent processes assume can all be known at the onset and sufficiently explained, with decisions then resting solely with interlocuters on whether to proceed. Yet, these risks may not always be fully predictable, especially in an evolving digital era in which open-access storytelling and research translation shifts the audience from narrower academic readers to multiple publics. Risks are also heightened for participants from regions with a history of authoritarianism where their narratives of challenging established power structures may attract the attention of those with the authority and influence to do them harm. Ethical narrative research thus, this chapter argues, entails balancing the interests and wishes of protagonists with the short- and long-term risks to these interlocuters through iterative reflection, consultation and collaborative (and sometimes revised) decision-making involving both researchers and participants.
The concluding chapter draws together the themes of the book and offers new paths forward for narrative research in new times. It summarises and demonstrates how the chapters have each brought new interdisciplinary dimensions to the key questions of the book around the ethics of storytelling, voice, power and representation. The closing discussion opens up avenues for future analysis primarily around the question of how scholars can bring critical perspectives to the promise of stories, without becoming too cynical about the power of narrating lived experience. It identifies further issues around time and temporality, the role of the listener, authority and tellability that call for the expertise of narrative scholars and socially engaged storytellers in our era.
This introductory chapter sets out the framework for the collection. It addresses current debates in narrative research and outlines the pressing social contexts that face narrative researchers today. It locates power, ethics, voice and representation as key issues in a time when stories of lived experience are the subject of heated social conjecture and are often instrumentalised by the uptake of narrative as a buzzword in political, corporate and media spheres. Offering an overview of the collection as a whole, this chapter also outlines the thematic sections and the guiding questions that underpin the interdisciplinary chapters.
At a time of contested realities and a renewed focus on the power of personal stories, narrative research is as relevant as ever. But while it has been praised for ‘giving voice’ to individuals and highlighting how they make sense of the social world, critics are starting to question which voices are being heard, or allowed to speak, and which experiences are made to count.
Supported by the editors’ popular podcast Narrative Now, this interdisciplinary volume addresses timely concerns about representation, power, voice, and the ethics of storytelling.
Contributors explore the capacities and limitations of narrative research, and map out new directions for the field while honouring its legacy.
Over the last 30 years, policy scholarship has demonstrated an increasing concern with narrative. At the same time, there has been limited consideration of the role of narrative in processes of change, particularly from an interpretivist-constructivist perspective. This chapter therefore makes a contribution to our understanding of the relationship between these two important variables. It does this by focusing on the discursive dynamics at play in a controversial policy area – that of drug law reform. The chapter argues that narratives can shape policy change, but only when actors in key positions of power subscribe to a particular narrative in the first place. Narrative subscription can occur in two ways – either through an appeal to facts, or to values (or both). Narrative subscription therefore provides the conceptual link between policy narratives and policy change.
