For 25 years since its first meeting in Geneva, the Life History and Biography Network (LHBN) of ESREA has been a forum for a wide range of researchers, including doctoral students, drawing on different disciplinary backgrounds, and coming from every corner of Europe, and beyond. Our conferences are based on the recognition and celebration of the diversity of methods, approaches and epistemologies in biographical research. And our aim is to create spaces for dialogue, reflexivity and discovery, in order to sustain trustful collaboration, publications and collaborative research projects.

Our recent conferences have explored the political role of life history and arts based research, the role of wisdom and the spiritual, the emotions, the embodied nature of learning and narratives, and the action of discourses in human lives; and where resources of hope lie, collectively and in individual lives, as well as in the research process.
 

The Conference theme

During the last conference in Copenhagen, 2017, on “Discourses we live by”, there were many moments when we reflected on the role of relationships and groups, both as resources and occasions for learning, e.g. when they offer recognition, challenges, and opportunities for reflection, and as contexts of power, oppression, and mystification, when frames of meaning and structures are imposed on us. And when our proximal system, the family and cultural groups in which we are embedded, seem unable to evolve with us. We also reflected on the role of conflict as a triggers for transformative and intercultural learning, and or a deadlock and the driving force behind dramatic escalations of violence.

We are social and communicating beings: in fact, we are born in a human group, a family, whatever this term might mean, across different cultures, and we become part of many groups, communities, teams, organizations, associations. Every time we engage with the new and different we have to learn how to position ourselves in connection to others, and to the whole. We also learn how to separate, to individuate, to take a distance, to be able to transform ourselves, and our relationships, in a healthier, safer, more respectful and rewarding ways. Separation as well as togetherness lie at the root of human flourishing. Our narratives can sustain, celebrate, or challenge the I, and the Us, in building individual and collective identities. Some questions:

• What kind of learning emerges from the experiences of connectedness?
• Do groups, families, teams and organisations 'learn'?
• How does such learning influence our lives and those whose lives we study? 
• What of separation processes and their place in learning?
• Can life-based or narrative research itself enhance togetherness, and if so how, in which conditions and with what effects?
• What are the conditions that enable people to learn within relational systems, and to transform them?
• Can adult education and learning profit from a better knowledge of these issues? If so, how?
• Is togetherness a motivator towards adult learning, and does education enhance togetherness?
• What are, on the contrary, are the potential manifestations of dis-connection, and with what implications?
• Can togetherness become a delusion, a mystification, a prison of the mind, or an obstacle in a world that celebrates individualism?

You can now submit your proposals and register through this site. The closing date for abstracts and other proposals is now the 25th October.

Can we also make you aware of a network blog that Mike Spence has set up. A message from Mike and link to the blog are below.

Very best wishes and looking forward to seeing you in Turin.

Laura, Linden and Alan

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 Message from Mike Spence: 

This year the LHBN, after popular requests to develop opportunities for digital communication, will be trialling an online forum.

The forum will be an online space that you can register yourself to, and use to share ideas, comments, notices and any other useful information.

It is very simple to use, and we want to avoid any complexity at this stage whilst we work out if it is something that would continue to be useful to the network.

http://lhbn.boards.net/ this link will take you to the Forum Home page, where you can click Login (top right) and use your email address to create a membership, with a password.

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ESREA – European Society for Research on the Education of Adults Life History and Biography Network

‘Togetherness' and its discontents

Connectivity (as well as belonging, cooperation, conflict and separation) in biographical narratives of adult education and learning

The Annual Conference in 2018 will be held in Turin, Italy, at COREP – SAA from Thursday 1st to Sunday 4th March 2018

Please be aware of the new conference web address: http://www.corep.it/esrea18/

 

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