Using Biographical Methods in Social Research

Introduction: Setting the Scene
Biographical Methods: an Introductory History
Mapping the Contemporary Uses of Biographical Research
Identifying Some Theoretical Issues
Illustrating Good Practice: Case Studies
Getting Started in Research
Interviewing and Recording Experience
Making Sense of Biography: Analysis
Representing the Stories: Writing Up
Is Biographical Research Valid and Ethical?
On Being a Biographical Researcher

Dr Barbara Merrill is a Reader in the Center for Lifelong Learning having joined the former Department of Continuing Education in 1991 as a project development officer and then researcher. Before coming to Warwick she worked as a secondary teacher and advisory teacher for the Coventry LEA and a project officer at the Community Education Development Center.

Currently she is the Academic Coordinator for the 2+2 Social Studies program, University Coordinator for the Community Enterprise and Development Foundation Degree and Director of the Center's undergraduate teaching program. She teaches undergraduate modules, supervises dissertation students and undertakes research.

'Merrill and West deliver what they promise - a comprehensive, accessible, and practical guide to conducting biographical research. They artfully develop the story of the method by blending theoretical and disciplinary material with their own auto/biographical experiences...[They] provide a compelling portrait of the strength, power, and humanity involved in biographical research'







This book provides a good discussion of the background of the method, the context in which it has developed, and the theoretical orientations the author use. Based on their own fields of expertise in sociology and psychology, Merrill and West share their personal and professional experiences as a way of engaging the reader in meaningful learning about biographical research, which they describe as a way of "connecting disparate social phenomena and personal experience and weaving understanding between them in new and sometimes surprising ways" (2).

Natalee PopadiukBiography





This may be for you if, like me, you have ever found yourself profoundly alienated from positivist notions of research, while at the same time being fascinated by the complex and vibrant stories you hear, and also the stories these encounters bring forth in you. Barbara Merrill and Linden West are concerned with the question of how biographical interviewing can be best used as a source of knowledge generation in social research. This text positions the biographical genre as offering particular insight into the production of selfhood seen as a dynamic interplay between social structure and individual lives.

David McCormackBritish Journal of Guidance and Counselling





The textbook Merril and West, as we have seen, focuses on a very specific area of qualitative research, the use of biography as a method of inquiry and understanding the world... Researchers inserted in the use of biographies will benefit from a