Looking Forward: The Futures of Auto|Biography Studies

Abstract

This introductory essay describes the collaborative and inclusive dialogic space of this issue, in which multiple scholars share their viewpoints on the futures of autojbiography studies. The essay surveys the seventy-seven contributions from diverse global and disciplinary perspectives that enter into discourse to consider "what's next" for the field. The editors also discuss some of the patterns that they see emerging on the pages of ajb: AutojBiography Studies and in other scholarship that point toward possible futures. Hipchen and Chansky include their own visions of possible futures as well.

My Unending Journey of Migration: An Autobiographical Inquiry

“…Methodologically, I have coined the stories from the self-reflective process. According to Hipchen and Chansky (2017), an author becomes selfreflective in their writing, hoping to hear personal voices that would form parts of a conversation. This is a text in which I have echoed my personal stories of migration.…”

La metodologí­a biográfica narrativa y posibilidades en el ámbito del docente universitario

“…Se hace patente a través de numerosas investigaciones (Goodson, 2004;Bolívar y Domingo, 2006;Oliveira, Coharik, Pereira, y Barbara, 2006;Cid-Sabucedo, Pérez-Abellás y Zabalza, 2009;Hernández, Sancho, Montané y Sánchez de Serdio, 2009;López de Maturana, 2010;Grangeiro Gondim, 2012;Muñiz Terra, 2012;González-Monteagudo y Ochoa-Palomo, 2014;Rubilar Donoso, 2015;Delgado-García y Boza-Carreño, 2016;Hipchen & Chansky, 2017;Passeggi, 2017;etc. ) la importancia que el método biográfico narrativo cobra en la actualidad, hasta lograr integrarse en la dimensión cualitativa como diseño metodológico con entidad propia.…”

Turning Migration Disadvantage into Educational Advantage. Autobiographies of Successful Students with an Immigrant Background

“…This transformative role of students has to be supported by researchers through multiple tasks: listen to them, give directly a voice and a possibility to express themselves, recognize their freedom and creativity in their narrating life, support their learning, facilitate their biographical work, read their life writing with more dialogic and sharing lens through which avoiding colonize their social/educational experiences (Merrill and West, 2009). This perspective recalls the transformative role we play as scholars of autobiographical narratives and what social/public roles we could play, considering the power that reading and writing life stories can have in engaging critical thinking, exploring subjectivity, and promoting counter-narrative on educational inequalities (Hipchen and Chansky, 2017). …”