Instrumental Narratives: Narrative Studies and the Storytelling Boom

Tampere, Finland

Tampere University

June 15-17, 2023

“This conference positions narrative scholars in the midst of the storytelling boom. Everyone is urged to share their story today, from consumers to multinational corporations, from private citizens to nation states. Storytelling consultants are thriving in today’s storytelling economy, but where are narrative scholars? Do the professional analyzers and theorizers of narrative have a say in the current storytelling boom? How to engage in a societal dialogue and debate as a narrative scholar?” - Tampere University Narrative Matters 2023 website

Featured topics

  • Storytelling boom and its social relevance

  • Novel ways of storytelling today

  • Emergent methods, ideas, and issues in narrative studies

Organizers

  • Maria Mäkelä, Matti Hyvärinen and Mari Hatavara, Tampere University, Narrare

  • Hanna Meretoja, University of Turku, SELMA

  • Merja Polvinen, University of Helsinki

Outcomes

Do you have outcomes we can add? Share them here.

Keynote Speakers

  • Jens Beckert

  • Sujatha Fernandes

  • Peter Lamarque

  • Ann Phoenix

PRESENTATIONS

Gill Adams. Sheffield Hallam University
Stories of research mobilities/immobilities: towards a sociomaterial analysis 

Nada Akrouh. Erasmus University Rotterdam
Beyond the Queue: Exploring Entanglements of Waiting and Care in Patients’ Stories

Ibrahim Alkhateeb. UCL and University of Hail.
A Performative Perspective to the Narratives of African-American and Black British Male Islamic Converts in Saudi Arabia

Molly Andrews. University College London.
Narrative, Memory and Political Rupture.

Inkeri Aula. Aalto University, Department of Art and Media. 
Combining narratives and sensory experiences: towards methods for investigating creativity 

Neil Badenhorst. University of Johannesburg. 
BETWEEN WORLDS: Building Imaginary Worlds for Visual Narrative

Ashley Barnwell. University of Melbourne, Australia. 
‘Deep stories’ at the dinner table: Remembering and forgetting colonisation in Australian settler families 

Adele Baruch. University of Southern Maine. 
Novel applications of storytelling and expressive approaches in the context of Counselor training

Natalya Bekhta. Tampere Institute for Advanced Study
Towards a “Better Future”?

Julia Bennett. University of Chester
Chester’s Canal: Peeling back the past to rediscover Colonial Era Cheshire

Jens Beckert
Keynote: What makes an imagined future credible?

Jonathan Berg
Enabling the good life: dream, aspiration or lie.

Kristine Blumfelde-Rutka. Riga Stradins University
Climate Change Narrative in Latvia: Business Environment Perceptions.

Kate Bowen-Viner. University of Bristol
Can young people’s stories about menstruation challenge stigma? Sex education, relational ontologies and sociomaterial approaches to narrative research.

Amanda M. Boyce . University of Trier 
Narrating Desires: Real Person (Fan) Fiction and Self-Discovery in Contemporary YA Novels 

Louis Boynton. University of West Georgia.
Narrative of Health, Happiness, and Harmony. 

Katy Campbell. University of Alberta.
Institutional Narrative as gatekeeper.

Aigars Ceplitis. RISEBA University of Applied Sciences 
Hypermodal anti-narrative instance: the dynamics of narrativity and coherence in Cine-VR 3D .

Roland Cerny-Werner. Paris-Lodron-University Salzbrug.
Word becomes action again and again.

Christina Christou. University of Birmingham, UK
Story Completion Method to Help People Make Sense of Difficult Emotions.

Britta Colligs. University of Trier, Germany.
Narrating the Land: Māori Storytelling and the Encouragement of Environmental Awareness and Activism.

 Tim Coughlan. The Open University
Agency, structure and reflection: co-creating a platform to support diverse representation of selfnarratives in study journeys.

Raquel da Silva. Iscte-IUL and University of Coimbra
Memorializing (violent) resistance to authoritarianism: Challenges and tensions at Portugal’s Aljube Museum - Resistance and Freedom.

Deborah Bailey-Rodriguez. Middlesex University
A novel storytelling method: Emotion maps in narrative research.

Dr. Veronika Sweet. lehrnen.online / Sweet and Partners
Acquisition Narrative Balancing.

Silvia Espinal Meza. University of Bristol .
“If I want to find social justice, I have to heal my colonial syndrome”: Narratives of social justice in education from the voices of rural teachers in Peru.

Sujatha Fernandes
Keynote: Trauma porn or witnessing? Narrating domestic worker experiences.

Katarzyna Filutowska. University of Humanities and Economics in Łódź
Personal testimonies vs. public narrative truth: Is this still the same (hi)story?

Elsje Fourie. University of Maastricht
Considering the "global novel" debate through the lens of socio-cultural theory and method.

Karen Fowler-Watt. Bournemouth University, UK
Imagining alternative futures: 'storylistening' in participatory arts as a route to peacebuilding.

Mark Freeman. College of the Holy Cross
Narrative, Memory, and Political Rupture II: Narrative as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

Leo Gazier Barraco. Saint-Denis Université (Paris 8)
Narrators' Fictions : a "Creative Narratology" proposal.

Carolin Gebauer. University of Wuppertal
Narrating Migration and its Affordances.

Melina Ghasseminejad. University of Antwerp
Empirical research in narrative studies: Taking hyper-diversity into account when developing a sampling strategy for reader response studies.

Gabriela Gore-Gorszewska. Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Older adults narrating their sexual health and sexual problems: chances and challenges of qualitative interview study on sex in later-life.

Kimberly Hall. Wofford College
The Promise and Precarity of Professional Storytelling.

Mika Hallila. University of Jyväskylä
Narration and Metamodern Ethos in Anna Soudakova's Novel "What the Pines See"

Logan Hamley. University of Waikato
Māori (Indigenous) story sovereignty: explorations of Māori youth narratives in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Karen Hanrahan. University of Brighton, UK
Bad Sister or Self-sacrificing Saint: transcending narratives of good versus evil in the lives of Irish nuns.

Kaiju Harinen. University of Turku
Minna Salami’s Narrative Activism: From Autobiographical Storytelling to Afrocentric and Feminist Counter-narrative.

Peter Lamarque
Keynote: The same old story: reflections on the identity of narratives.

Ann Phoenix
Keynote: Intersectionality and hauntology in everyday narratives of disjunction.

Phil Wood, Nottingham Trent University
Past-Present-Future: The Eternal Emergence of Processual Narrative