Narratives – Stories – and Their Interpretations

Guests from outside of AUP must register 48 hours in advance.

Invited Speaker: Michael Bamberg

Abstract: This talk will explore the close connections between ‘doing ethnography’ and interpretive work with practices in which we tell stories. We will jointly work through a number of visual clips in which we attempt to learn to see things that others can’t.

Michael has been an important figure in the promotion of a series of different genres of applied linguistic, narrative and identity research. From his dissertation work on the acquisition of narratives (1987), through positioning theory (1997a, 2003) and analysis of narratives (2011b, 2012), to identity construction in talk-in-interaction (2011b, 2011c; Bamberg, De Fina & Schiffrin, 2011; Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008), he has contributed varied strands to psychology, applied linguistics and identity theory (2011; De Fina, Schiffrin & Bamberg, 2006; Bamberg, De Fina, & Schiffrin, 2007, 2011). He is the founding editor of the journal Narrative Inquiry through which he supported and encouraged theorizing and research into narrative from differing perspectives for over 20 years. In addition, he also served as the series editor of Studies in Narrative consisting for a series of books at the cutting edge of narrative research. Currently, he is under contract with Cambridge University Press (with C. Demuth, Aalborg, and M. Watzlawick, Berlin), tasked with the edition of the Cambridge Handbook of Identity (CUP, 2020). After serving his home institution recently as Associate Dean of the College & Director of the Center for Enhancement of Teaching & Learning, he is preparing for his Fulbright Fellowship as Distinguished Chair in Humanities and Social Sciences at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan – followed by his (well-deserved) sabbatical in 2020 – for which he is open to explore the world.