Before, beside and after (beyond) the biographical narrative

Before, Beside and After (Beyond) the Biographical Narrative The ESREA Life History and Biography Network has been active and influential over many years. It offers a forum for a wide range of researchers, for those new and starting out in the field as well as for experienced and regular participants in the network, and it draws on differing disciplinary backgrounds. It includes researchers and doctoral students from every part of Europe, north, south, east and west, the Americas, Africa and beyond. The Network first met in Geneva in 1994 and has provided the basis for diverse and influential publications, as well as for major collaborative research projects and many other forms of collaboration. The network has explored in the last years areas of research and practice in life history and biography/autobiography/auto/biography that have been neglected perhaps (the body, wisdom) and those which are of growing interest: emotions, words, interdisciplinary research, agency and structure. The field(s) of life history and biography research are very much characterised by schools of practice, by national boundaries. The convenors and the organizer of the 2014 conference recognize this and wish to explore the possibilities of crossing some of the boundaries of practice, some of the frontiers dividing country-specific cultures of research, crossing, too, some of the persistently obstinate linguistic boundaries/barriers that, we feel, impoverish the debate that is central to a vigorous field of research such as ours patently is. Thus, this collection of papers wishes to concentrate both on the contents and the results of our research, as well as on how we do our work. We would all agree that the narratives – in the widest sense of the term – that we elicit, collect, listen to, record, film, transcribe, analyse and communicate (and co-construct) are located at the very core of our theory and practice. All the more reason, we feel, to take this opportunity to turn our attention to what „goes in“ to the biographical narratives in our research. For this reason, the title „Before, Beside and After the Biographical Narrative“ has been chosen with the aim of opening up a discussion around the „before“ and „after“ of people's biographical processes, that is, turning our attention, besides to our more visible practices, as well to that which isn't protocolled, transcribed, described, or presented and yet which is in the stories, and is an intrinsic part of the narratives. In attending to different aspects of the biographical experience - voice, bodily expression, relationships, silences, signs, unconscious processes and so on - we can ask important questions about our perspectives, our methods, our writings, our discussions. The many ways of doing life history and biography research, and a deep theoretical and epistemological reflection on the the practice of biographical research and biographical narratives, is a central focus of this volume.