Recording now available: QUAHRC seminar: Joe Whelan on Narratives Beyond Interpretation
View the seminar recording below
Seminar abstract
Research that moves beyond econometric ways of knowing and confronts the complexity of people's lives often means dwelling on lived experience. Following O' Neill and Robert's (2019) 'Walking Interview Biographical Method' (WIBM) this presentation will explore research designed around shared walking as an arts based, biographical method for conducting research that accesses the lived realities and cultures of individuals and groups, through sensory, spatial, embodied, affective aspects of lives/lived experiences (O’Neill andRoberts 2019). It will be suggested that the creative application of walking as a biographical method extends critical biographical sociology; a deeply engaged relational way of attuning that evokes knowing and understanding through empathic and embodied learning and supports biographical research and critical analysis to explore:
• A sense of our past, present and future and their interconnections
• The social conditions, social relations, social landscape and their relevance
• The participatory, and policy orientated possibilities of biographical research
Dr Annie Irvine will chair the event, with time for questions.
Speaker biography
Dr Joe Whelan is a sociologist and social policy scholar and an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College, The University of Dublin. Joe is a member of the Editorial Collective of the high impact scholarly journal Critical Social Policy.
Joe's main area of research interest focuses on exploring the intersections of welfare, poverty and work to problematise and challenge 'common sense' understandings in these contexts. He is particularly interested in exploring and documenting lived experiences in the context of welfare recipiency and poverty. In much of his work, lived experience as a form of knowledge and as a vital component of a holistic evidence base is something Joe continuously seek to champion. Joe’s recent monograph ‘Hidden Voices: Lived Experiences in the Irish Welfare Space’ was published in paperback by Policy Press in October 2023.