Doing Collective Biography

This book introduces the reader to collective biography, an innovative research methodology for use in education and the social sciences. The methodology of collective biography overcomes the theory/practice divide, by putting theory to use in everyday life, and using everyday life to understand and to extend theory.

Doing Collective Biography provides guidelines for developing a collective biography project and demonstrates how these guidelines emerged from and were shaped by projects on such topics as subjectivity, power, agency, reflexivity, literacy, gender, and neoliberalism at work. Each chapter gives a detailed example of collective biography in practice, showing how a group of students and/or scholars can work collaboratively to investigate aspects of the production of subjectivity, and clearly demonstrates how poststructural theory can be elaborated and refracted through the experiences of ordinary everyday life.

This is key reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students on Education and social science courses with a research element, as well as for academics and professionals undertaking research projects.