In this episode of Narrative Now we speak to Nikki Hennigham and Wajeehah Aayeshah about the ethical aspects and challenges of telling stories that are silenced, traumatic, or socially taboo. The discussion takes its starting point in Nikki and Wajeehah’s respective chapters in our recent book, Narrative Research Now but also goes beyond these chapters to touch on broader aspects that unite their two chapters. One thorny topic is ownership – who can tell whose stories – while another is the temporality of such stories, that is, are stories untellable for eternity or how do changing contexts also change how stories are viewed.  

For this episode we speak to Tara Poole, Coordinator of Creative City Ballarat, and Trevor Coad, a project collaborator and survivor, from the Continuous Voices project. Framed as a project that connects trauma and creativity to stand for change and resistance against sexual assault and sexual abuse, Continuous Voices will result in a co-designed memorial to survivors of sexual abuse in the city of Ballarat. The project was unique in its long development time-frame and collaborative, art-based workshops bringing together council, artists, and survivors. We discussed creative collaboration, trauma-informed storytelling, and place-based narratives. 

In this episode we speak to Dr Tyne Daile Sumner, a literary scholar at the Australian National University. Tyne is currently conducting an ARC-DECRA project called ‘Beyond Big Brother: New Narratives for Understanding Surveillance’ where she looks at how new forms of digital surveillance are represented in literature. We spoke to Tyne to hear more about this project and find out how classic literary narratives - such as George Orwell's 1984 - and new surveillance novels alert us to trends in the present and help us imagine the future

In this episode we speak to Dr Mariam Tokhi and Dr Fiona Reilly, both clinicians who are also affiliated with the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health sciences. Mariam and Fiona are both involved in Australia’s first university subject in Narrative Medicine and they share what they are trying to teach students in this course. We also speak to them about the role of stories in health care and what allowing room for telling and listening to stories of both patients and staff can bring.

In this episode we speak to radio producer and podcaster Miyuki Jokiranta about audio stories. We discuss the challenges of capturing people’s attention via their ears as well as the seductive power of conventional modes of storytelling. Miyuki introduces us to the ethical imperative to rethink how we structure narratives and who we centre as storytellers. This ‘how to’ episode offers insights into the process of planning and creating stories for audio. For an extra feature of Miyuki’s list of listens see the Narrative Network website. 

For this episode we spoke to Edwina Shaw, who teaches creative writing in schools, libraries and at the University of Queensland, and also is a writer herself. Edwina’s work focuses on the healing power of stories and in this episode we explore how storytelling can be a way of working through trauma. We focus on Edwina’s creative writing sessions with people who grew up in out-of-home care and hear about how imaginative and creative writing exercises hold the potential to tell one’s story in a different way. Edwina also addresses the extensive work that goes into making these sessions safe for everyone.

Please note: the episode does contain references to traumatic life events that may be confronting. If listeners need to seek support, we recommend the following services:

Lifeline (AUS)
Beyond Blue (AUS)               
Lifeline (US) 
NHS overview of services (UK)

For this episode we spoke to Professor Sophie Woodward, University of Manchester, about her work with object-based methods. We asked Sophie why objects are so good at prompting people to tell stories, and what it is that we can learn from these stories. Sophie took us on a tour from her earlier work on fashion objects to her current project on dormant things we keep in our homes. We also hear about a storytelling toolkit, developed together with a community organisation, which takes these methods outside the university’s walls and instead puts them to work to facilitate positive connections between members through storytelling.

In this episode we speak to Arthur Frank about his life’s work on narrative. Frank is an Emeritus Professor in Sociology at the University of Calgary, Canada, and has won many accolades for his work on illness narratives and ethics of care. We discuss Frank’s most well-known work The Wounded Storyteller (1995), now a central text in the narrative canon, and why this book became so influential. We also chat about Frank’s new book, King Lear: Shakespeare's Dark Consolations, where he coins the term ‘vulnerable reading’, a useful concept for narrative researchers in challenging times, and hear his views on the future of narrative studies.

In this episode we speak to Rose Barrowcliffe about changes to how First Nations narratives are collected and archived in settler-colonial countries like Australia. Rose is a Butchulla doctoral researcher at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia and the inaugural First Nations Archives Advisor to the Queensland State Archives. In this role, she has initiated work on new metadata practices, outreach, and self-determination. Rose's doctoral research focuses on the Kgari (Fraser Island) Research Archive and uses both visual and audio narratives and family stories. The episode offers a fascinating conversation about silences, visibility, surveillance, and what comes to count as ‘valuable’ records in a nation’s story about its past.

For this ‘What’s new’ episode we spoke to sociologist Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves, Monash University, and Dr Josephine Wilson, a Perth-based writer and scholar at Murdoch University, about their recent collaboration. Barbara and Josephine brought together research narratives and creative narratives to experiment with how to best convey the loneliness experienced by older Australians living in aged care. In our conversation with Barbara and Josephine we discussed how they came together over this shared interest and how their collaboration worked. They also read one of the compelling stories that came out of this project, and offered advice on how to forge ethical working relationships between academics and creatives.