Doctoral Workshop with Anna De Fina, Professor of Italian Language and Linguistics 

(Georgetown University)

 

Using Narrative as a Research Methodology 

 

CCM Doctoral Seminars

Room 709a Monday 3^rdJune, 10am-2pm

Dear PhD students,

 

We are very happy to announce that Professor Anna De Fina, of Georgetown University, will be joining a departmental workshop for PhD students on Monday 3^rdJune 2019. Professor De Fina, an expert in narrative analysis, will open the workshop before moving on to facilitate discussions on the readings detailed below (please also find them attached). In the second part, Ibrahim Alkhateeb, a doctoral student who is employing a narrative lens, will share data from his research for discussion.

The workshop is open to 25 doctoral students from CCM.

 

Should you be interested in participating in this event, we would like to invite you to submit a 150 word abstract synthesising your research project and explaining your interest in the topic of this workshop. The deadline for the submission of your abstract is 27^thMay 2019.

Details of the activities are provided below.

Programme 

Part I (10:00 – 11:15)

– Opening Remarks. 

– Reading/discussion groups.

 

De Fina, A. Who tells which story and why? Micro and macro contexts in the narrative. Text & Talk, 28: 3 (2008), 421-442

De Fina, A. What is your dream? Fashioning the migrant self. Language & Communication, 59(2018), 42-52

 

Coffee break (11:15 – 11:30) 

Part II (11:30 -12:45) 30 mins + 45 min discussion

– The Narratives of Anglophone Male Muslim Converts in Saudi Arabia

Ibrahim Alkhateeb, UCL Institute of Education

Abstract

Conversion to another faith has been widely investigated in social sciences, especially in the fields of sociology (Galonnier, 2015; Moosavi, 2015), psychology (Lindgren, 2004; Kose, 1996; Peek, 2005) and religious studies (Hermansen, 2014; Nieuwkerk, 2014; Roald, 2012). However, in linguistics and language studies, it has not been the focus. In my work, I am investigating how the identities of Anglophone male expatriate converts in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) are enacted in their narratives. More precisely, I am trying to answer the following research questions: How are these male converts’ experiences performatively enacted within the context of life story research interviews in the KSA? What are the commonalities that performatively emerge in their stories? What does this reveal about the complexity of male Islamic converts’ experiences in the KSA and intersectionality, particularly with regard to the indexing of salient aspects of identity that are invoked by these converts?

I understand identity in a Butlerian sense, where identity is understood to be performatively enacted by repeating, conforming and sometimes subverting of concealed forms of the self in discourse (Butler, 1990). I found that by adopting narrative research and looking at how they position and align themselves with their story worlds in their narrative, I will be able to understand how their identities are performatively enacted. In the workshop I will share some of my interview data and illustrate how I am going to analyze them using Baynham (2011, 2015) and De Fina (2003). 

 

The presentation will focus on how the researcher has chosen to use, define and apply a narrative lens to his work; pieces of data will be shared with participants.

Discussion time will aim to: a) address issues arising from the presentation; and b) link with discussions from Part I of the workshop. 

Lunch time (12:45 – 13:30) 

 

Part III (13:30-14:00)

– Plenary & Anna de Fina’s Concluding Remarks

 

Should you have any questions regarding the workshop, please don’t hesitate to contact us per email: ccmstudentseminars@gmail.com

Please find slides from I. AlKhateeb’s presentation below