Welcome to the Narrative Network website. The Narrative Network is a network for academics at the University of Melbourne interested in narrative research, founded by Ashley Barnwell and Signe Ravn. Here you can find information about the network, our activities, our members, our popular podcast series, Narrative Now, and our new book, Narrative Research Now: Critical Perspectives on the Promise of Stories.

Stayed tuned for details on our next event!

• Works in Progress #4

  In April 2023 we held our fourth Work in Progress seminar; a seminar featuring ongoing work by members of the Narrative Network. For this event we had a great line-up of four speakers, who took us through a diverse range of projects using a narrative approach. First up was Wajeehah Aayeshah who spoke about her research on how early career academics …

  April 18, 2023 Past Events
• Audio Stories Workshop with Miyuki Jokiranta

  On February 7, 2023, 15 Narrative Network members joined a full day workshop run by Miyuki Jokiranta from ABC Radio National on audio stories. In a full overview of the design aspects of making audio stories, Miyuki took us through both conceptual thinking and concrete examples to understand how to think about storyboarding, sound, genre, audience etc. as we considered what …

  February 7, 2023 Past Events
• The Indigenous Narrative Paradox in Colonial Archives

   

  September 14, 2022 Past Events
• Works in Progress #3

   

  December 2, 2020 Past Events
• Telling Other People’s Stories: Critique of Empathy

   

  June 10, 2020 Past Events
• The Promise & Perils of Narrative

   

  November 3, 2019 Past Events
• Narrative Research/Research Narratives

   

  April 8, 2019 Past Events
• Works in Progress #2

   

  October 24, 2018 Past Events
• Launch & Maria Tamboukou

   

  April 9, 2018 Past Events
• Works in Progress #1

   

  October 20, 2017 Past Events
• How Do We Work with Narrative Analysis?

   

  November 3, 2016 Past Events

A new book from the Narrative Network!

Featuring 8 exciting chapters by NN members, and Introduction and Conclusion, and an inspiring foreword from Rachel Thomson, the book is now available for pre-order from Bristol University Press here.

Table of Contents

Foreword – Rachel Thomson

Narrative Now: Trends and Tensions – Ashley Barnwell and Signe Ravn

Part 1: Institutional Authority and Counter-stories

1. Telling Stories with Ribbons: Visual Acknowledgment in the Wake of Child Sexual Abuse – Dave McDonald

2. Policy Narratives and Policy Change: The Case of Pill Testing – Martin Bortz

3. The Criminalised Other as Storyteller – The Promise and Peril of Bringing ‘Lived Experience’ into the Classroom – Diana Johns

Part 2: Tellable and Untellable Stories

4. Ethical Weaving: Creative Narrations of Family Trauma and Resilience – Wajeehah Aayeshah

5. ‘I can’t believe how much I’ve done’: Joan and The Evolution of Her Life Story – Nikki Henningham

Part 3: Ethics of Representation

6. Songs as Narratives: Ethical Tensions in Midnight Oil’s Dead Heart (1986) and Gadigal Land (2020) – Liz Dean

7. Reading Back as a Way to Give Back? A Narrative Practice-informed Method for Interview-based Research – Sarah Strauven

8. Narrating Women’s Life Histories: Voice, Audience, Ethics – Rachael Diprose

Narrative Next: Ways Forward for Narrative Research – Ashley Barnwell and Signe Ravn

The Narrative Network draws members from the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts and beyond. It currently has around 70 members with diverse interests in narrative research.

Want to join the network?

If you are a University of Melbourne staff member or student and wish to join the Narrative Network, you can sign up to the mailing list here.

Current members:

• Anne McLaren (Asia Institute)
• Alison Horbury (School of Culture & Communication)
• Allison Creed (Faculty of Arts)
• Andrea Cook (Melbourne School of Design)
• Andrea Jia (MSD)
• Anne Farrelly (Melbourne Graduate School of Education)
• Ashley Barnwell (School of Social & Political Sciences)
• Amy Vanderharst (SSPS)
• Alison Young (SSPS)
• Ara Keys (Durham University, UK)
• Bina Fernandez (SSPS)
• Brenda Laskey (School of Languages & Linguistics)
• Marty Bortz (Melbourne School of Government)
• Carole Hinchcliffe (Melbourne Law School)
• Carla Pascoe-Leahy (SHAPS)
• Caroline Tully (SHAPS)
• Claire Tanner (School of Biomedical Sciences)
• Claire Loughnan (SSPS)
• Dave McDonald (SSPS)
• David Goodman (SHAPS)
• Diana Johns (SSPS)
• Diana Langmead (MSD)
• Elena Balcaite (SPSS)
• Elaine Pratley (SSPS)
• Erin Scudder (SCC)
• Erin Fitz-Henry (SSPS)
• Hamza Jehangir (SCC)
• Hayley Singer (SCC)
• Helen Morgan
• Hernán Cuervo (MGSE)
• Imogen Carr (School of Geography)
• Jennifer Andersen (MGSE)
• Julie McLeod (MGSE)
• Jack Tan
• Janne Morton (SLL)
• Jennifer Balint (SSPS)
• Jessica Gerrard (MGSE)
• Joanne Higginson (SHAPS)
• John Quay (MGSE)
• Julia Cook (MGSE)
• Julia Hurst (SHAPS)
• Julie Fedor (SHAPS)
• Jens Zin (SSPS)
• Karen Farquharson (SSPS)
• Liz Dean (SSPS)
• Mitchell Harrop
• Mitch Goodwin (Arts)
• Monica Minnegal (SSPS)
• Nicole Davis (SHAPS/MGSE)
• Nikki Henningham (SHAPS)
• Odette Kelada (SCC)
• Rachel Thompson (University of Sussex)
• Rachael Diprose (SSPS)
• Radha O’Meara (SCC)
• Rebecca Bunn (MLS)
• Rebecca Croser (MLS)
• Rebecca Defina (MSD)
• Rowland Mosbergen (Melbourne Data Analytics Platform)
• Sara Meger (SSPS)
• Sarah Maddison (SSPS)
• Signe Ravn (SSPS)
• Tamas Wells (SSPS)
• Veronique Duché (SLL)
• Wajeehah Aayeshah (Arts)

Narrative Network members work across a diverse range of fields. Here you will find a few featured projects from our members.

Details of further projects are forthcoming, so check back at a later date for more.

• Narratives of identity within place

   
• Policy Narratives & Policy Change

   
• Telling Stories with Ribbons

   

The Narrative Network has friends in Australia and around the world. Some of these friends have been previous guests at our events and work in research centres or with projects on narrative.

Maria Tamboukou, Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London, UK

Jennifer Mason, Morgan Centre, Manchester University, UK

Rachel Thomson, Sussex University, UK

Maria Mäkelä, Narrare: Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies, Tampere University, Finland (AB)

Julie McLeod, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia

Alistair Thomson, School of History, Monash University

Kate Douglas, Centre for Life Narrative, Flinders

How the Narrative Network got started …

Signe and Ash both started working at the University of Melbourne in 2015 and, in the process of learning about their colleagues’ research, they discovered that many scholars were interested in narrative but that a forum for sharing these interests did not yet exist. In 2016 they organised an event to bring researchers together to talk about how they do narrative research in different disciplines. That was the beginning and, today, the Narrative Network comprises 70+ members from across the Faculty of Arts and beyond. After a series of smaller events, in 2018 the Network was officially launched by author and academic Tony Birch at a fancy reception at the Arts West Research Lounge. Since then, the Narrative Network has hosted two events per year, including members’ work-in-progress presentations and guest talks from scholars and artists.

The Narrative Network welcomes new members and is happy to facilitate contract research.

Meet the conveners

Signe Ravn is an Associate Professor in Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Signe’s research explores processes of marginalisation and positions of marginality, with a focus on youth, gender, disadvantage and risk. Her current theoretical interests centre around temporality, futurity and subjectivity, alongside her ongoing interests in qualitative methodology, narrative, creative methods and research ethics. From 2017–2020 she was an ARC DECRA fellow, researching the everyday lives and imagined futures of young girls who have left the mainstream school system before finishing Year 12 in Victoria, Australia. This qualitative, longitudinal research project explored micro-processes of marginalisation, temporality and subjectivity with a particular focus on relations to place and belonging. Signe has published her research in a number of journals such as Sociology, Current Sociology, and British Journal of Sociology of Education, and has recently published the co-authored book Youth, Risk, Routine: A New Perspective on Risk-taking in Young Lives (with Tea Bengtsson; Routledge, 2019) and three co-edited books.

Ashley Barnwell is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Melbourne. She is interested in sociological aspects of emotions, memory, and narrative, and the role of life writing, archives, and literature in sociological research. From 2019–2022, she was an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow working on the project ‘Family Secrets, National Silences: Intergenerational Memory in Settler Colonial Australia’. This project aims to investigate the inherited family secrets, stories, and memories that inform Australians’ understandings of colonial history. Ashley is author of Critical Affect: The Politics of Method (Edinburgh UP 2020), co-author of Reckoning with the Past: Family Historiographies in Postcolonial Australian Literature (with Joseph Cummins, Routledge 2018) and co-editor of Research Methodologies for Auto/Biography Studies (with Kate Douglas, Routledge 2019). She was the Seymour Scholar for Biography and a Research Fellow at the National Library of Australia. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at The Morgan Centre, Manchester, the National Centre for Biography ANU; Srishti Institute of Art and Design, Bangalore, and Narrare Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies, Tampere.

Welcome to our podcast Narrative Now!

Narrative Now is a podcast series that is produced by the Narrative Network in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. It is hosted by Ashley Barnwell and Signe Ravn. The podcast covers both ‘how-to’ episodes focusing on different approaches to working with narrative and storytelling, and ‘what’s new’ episodes that dive into new trends in narrative research.

Check out our latest episode and subscribe to the series wherever you find your podcasts.

• Episode Thirteen: Audio stories beyond the narrative arc with Miyuki Jokiranta

   
• Episode Twelve: Healing Trauma through Creative Writing with Edwina Shaw

   
• Episode Eleven: Storytelling through objects with Sophie Woodward

   
• Episode Ten: Talking wounded storytelling and vulnerable reading with Arthur Frank

   
• Episode Nine: Indigenous Narratives in Colonial Archives with Rose Barrowcliffe

   
• Episode Eight: Narrative research meets creative writing with Barbara Barbosa Neves and Josephine Wilson

   
• Episode Seven: The ‘Dangers of Narrative’ with Maria Mäkelä and Samuli Björninen

   
• Episode Six: Delving into ‘deep stories’ with Arlie Hochschild

   
• Episode Five: Talking ‘Turning Points’ and Trans Memoir with Yves Rees

   
• Episode Four: Telling Stories Now & Then with Ken Plummer

   
• Episode Three: How to put yourself in the story

   
• Episode Two: Collective narratives

   
• Episode One: How to story a book with Rachel Thomson

   
• Episode 0: Introduction