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Section: Sociology
Liz Stanley
- Name
- Professor Liz Stanley
- Title
- Director of the Centre for Narrative and Auto/Biographical Studies
- Organisation
- Sociology, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh - Address
- 6.22 Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD
- Telephone
- ++44 (0)131 651 3139
- liz.stanley@ed.ac.uk
- URL
- http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/staff/sociology/stanley_liz
Present projects
I am Director of the University's new Centre for Narrative and Auto/Biographical Studies (NABS). NABS is a very research-oriented virtual Centre (http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/NABS/ ) and runs an active programme of workshops, seminars and conferences. A set of six ESRC-funded seminars on Narrative Studies will take place between March 2007 and July 2008, with full information about these on the NABS webpages. I'm presently supervising three PhD students whose research is on narrative and auto/biographical topics and welcome inquiries from people also interested in researching at PhD level in this area.
The main (but not the only) research project I'm currently engaged in concerns the Olive Schreiner Electronic Epistolarium. The approximately 7000 archived letters of the feminist writer and social theorist Olive Schreiner are, with a colleague from the University of Northampton, Dr Helen Dampier, being transcribed and will be published in total as an electronic epistolarium, together with an editorial apparatus of footnotes and accompanying bibliographic essays. Again, further information will be found on the NABS webpages. I hope two PhD students will start work on different aspects of the Schreiner letters in September 2007 and very much welcome further inquiries from people interested in postgraduate or post-doctoral research on Schreiner's writings, her social theory and her letters.
Main research interests
Historical sociology; epistemology & methodology; feminist theory & sociological theory; narrative & auto/biographical theory & research; radical alternatives to sociology. I use historical sociology as the field upon which to deploy the latter four theoretical, epistemological & methodological interests.
PhD Supervision
I have supervised to successful completion well over 50 PhD theses (numbers 59 and 60 will be examined during 2007) and love working with PhD students. I'm interested in supervising any interesting project in sociology broadly conceived (my own research and writing has always been on the borders of sociology with its inter/disciplinary ‘others', including philosophy, history, literature & history as well as women's & cultural studies). Most of the theses I've supervised have clustered under the broad methodological headings of narrative & auto/biography and feminist epistemology & methodology, but have concerned a very wide range of substantive topics. Current and recent PhD topics I'm supervising are:
- Everyday constructions and uses of everyday number in a Hebridean community
- Gender themes in queer e-(per)zines
- Practitioner accounts of alternative therapies
- Social etiquette in Senegal, Poland and America
- Martial law in wartime moral life
- Masculinities & young Asian British men
- Mass-Observation's wartime diaries
- Narrative, time & loss in the accounts of Karelian women
- Women travellers & travel writing/representation
- ‘National efficiency' & the re-making of British motherhood after the South African War 1899/1902
- Soldiers' diaries & the inscription of masculinities
- Midwives' stories about midwifery
- Moroccan women's narratives
- Lives and work of Unitarian women
- Women's wartime testimonies
Publications 2002 to now
Books
(2006) Mourning Becomes… Post/Memory and the Concentration Camps of the South African War Manchester: Manchester University Press; USA: Rutgers University Press.
(2002) Imperialism, Labour and the New Woman: Olive Schreiner’s Social Theory Durham, UK: sociologypress.
Articles & chapters
(2006, in press) “Cultural Entrepreneurs, Proto-Nationalism and Women's Testimony Writings: From the South African War 1899/1902 to 1948” (with Helen Dampier) Journal of Southern African Studies
(2007, in press) “‘Views don't make any difference between friends': dealing with political disagreements in some Olive Schreiner franchise letters” South African Historical Journal
(2007, in press) “‘‘Through a glass, darkly': Interpretational possibilities for reading the past” to be published in translation in the Icelandic Historical Journal
(2006) “Using feminist fractured foundationalism in researching children in the concentration camps of the South African War” in (ed) Sharlene Hesse-Biber Handbook on Feminist Research Sage Publications, New York, 591-604 (with Sue Wise).
(2006) “Having it all: a future for feminist research” in (eds) Kathy Davis, Mary Evans et al Sage Handbook on Gender & Women's Studies Sage Publications, London, 430-70 (with Sue Wise).
(2006) “Knowledge, the ‘moment of writing' and the simulacrum diaries of Johanna Brandt-Van Warmelo” in (eds) Kate Milnes et al Narrative, Memory and Knowledge Huddersfield, UK : University of Huddersfield Press , 27-39 (with Helen Dampier).
(2006) “Putting it into practice: Using feminist fractured foundationalism in researching children in the concentration camps of the South African War (with Sue Wise) Sociological Research Online 13:2 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/1/stanley.html
(2005) “Letters as / not a genre” Life Writing 2, 2, pp.75-101 (with Margaretta Jolly).
(2005) “Emily Hobhouse, moral life and the concentration camps of the South African War, 1899-1902” South African Historical Journal 52, pp. 60-81.
(2005) “A child of its time: hybridic perspectives on othering in sociology” Sociological Research Online 12: 3 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/10/3/stanley.html
(2005) “Aftermaths: Post/memory, commemoration and the concentration camps of the South African War 1899-1902” European Review of History , 12, 1, 87-113 (with Helen Dampier).
(2004) “The epistolarium: on theorising letters and correspondences” Auto/Biography 12, 216-50.
(2004) “A methodological toolkit for feminist research: analytical reflexivity, accountable knowledge, moral epistemology and being ‘a child of our time'” in (eds) Heather Piper and Ian Stronach Educational Research: Difference and Diversity Aldershot , UK : Gower, pp.3-29.
(2004) “Black labour and the concentration system of the South African War” Joernaal vir Eietdse Geskiedenis / Journal of Contemporary History 28, 2, pp.190-213.
(2004) "Beyond marriage: “The less said about love and life-long continuance together the better”" Feminism & Psychology , 14, pp.332-43 (with Sue Wise).
(2003) “Looking back, looking forward: recent feminist sociology reviewed” Sociological Research Online vol. 8, no. 3, http://www.socresonline.org.uk/8/3/wise.html (with Sue Wise ).
(2002) “Women's South African War testimonies: remembering, forgetting and forgiving in Should We Forget?” Tydskrif vir Nederlands e Afrikaans (TN&A) 9, pp.93-118.
(2002) “‘Shadows lying across her pages': Epistolary aspects of reading ‘the eventful I' in Olive Schreiner's letters 1889 – 1913” Journal of European Studies 32, pp.251-66.
(2002) “A ‘secret history' of local mourning: the South African War, the Vrouemonument and state commemoration” Society in Transition: Journal of the South African Sociological Association 19, 1-22.
(2002) “Mourning becomes…: the work of feminism in the spaces between lives lived and lives written” Women's Studies International Forum 25, pp.1-17.
This page was published on 3 March 2009