Past events in 2014

Assembling the vessel
The Vessel is a meandering work of art, a cluster of anecdotes augmented by imagery from diverse sources. The topic is a floating metal box: former U.K. prison ship H.M.P. The Weare, now renamed Jascon 27 and serving as home to international oil workers in the Niger Delta. Artist Mike Ricketts shared The Vessel and explored relationships between its structure and different presentations and its unusual subject: a non-propelled barge constructed almost entirely of shipping containers; an often-invisible entity with an unusual itinerary and unstable identity; an object of controversy that's utterly mundane.

NOVELLA/CNR symposium - Mapping the present, envisioning the future
This event marks the launch of two books: Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life (Oxford 2014) by Molly Andrews (NOVELLA and Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London) and Living with HIV and ARVS: Three-letter Lives (Palgrave 2013) by Corinne Squire (NOVELLA and Centre for Narrative Research, University of East London).

Intimacy narratives of single mothers in the South-East of England
This event was presented by Charlotte Morris, University of Sussex. This seminar discussed findings from doctoral research investigating heterosexual single mothers' narratives of intimacy. It focused on the construction of their narratives, their relation to the wider social context of unsettled intimacies and the tension between ideals and realities of intimacy.

TCRU/NOVELLA seminar - Habits, routines and temporalities of consumption
Dale is Professor of Sociology at The University of Manchester. Dale's expertise is in the study of consumption, where he has led a number of research projects. He edited the three volume 'Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture' (2011), and has published a number of books and peer-reviewed journal articles on consumption. His principal areas of research interest in relation to consumption are: sustainability; theories of social change; time use and the temporal organisation of everyday life; technologies and innovation; taste, belonging and social distinction.

TCRU/NOVELLA seminar - 'I felt like crying': feelings, moral judgement and creative revoicing in older children's narrative talk
Children's talk among themselves is full of anecdotes, narrative fragments and references to popular TV and film stories. Janet argues that these narratives provide children with unique opportunities for representing, exploring and evaluating personal and fictional experience and presenting themselves as particular kinds of people.

Environment as a way into exploring children's narratives of self and space: emerging analyses from fieldwork in India and the UK
This event is presented by Catherine Walker, Institute of Education. In this presentation, Catherine draw upon her analysis of data generated with 11-12 year old children and their families living in different socioeconomic and environmental contexts in Andhra Pradesh, India and the UK to consider how children understand and talk about their environments and themselves as present and future inhabitants of these environments.

Exploring narratives of refugees and Christian social activists
This event is presented by Mary Sutton, University of East London

NOVELLA conference
This one day conference at St Catherine's College Oxford show cased the whole NOVELLA node and the range of methods and findings of the five projects connected to the node. Catherine Koehler Reissman was the keynote speaker for the conference.