Derek Morris
Job Title
PhD title: Narratives and Memory: The Molding of American Soldier Imaginings

City (Address)
EdinburghCountry (Address)
UKResearch interests
Research interests
Memory, identity, Ideology, Narrative Inquiry, Storytelling and ethnography, discourse analysis, life-writing, Auto/Biography, Documents of Life, Iraq and the Middle East, Masculinities, Identity construction, Identity and Alterity, Collective memory, Storytelling and narrative, Myth and storytelling, militaries, Critical ethnography
Background
PhD Research
My research focus is the soldier subjectivity and its relation to the American people. As a former soldier, I have both struggled and thrived in the narratives built around soldiers and noticed how the military exploits many of the cultural forms present in America. This type of analysis will be different than other forms of research which do not approach the veterans themselves. There is no interface amid the subject’s agency and the abstract, no conception in how these can be circumscribed. Utilizing the critical humanist approach, I hope for a greater understanding of the place of the veteran in the many imaginings across the social fabric.
Supervisors
Publications
Morris, Derek. 2013. Of Monomyth and Melancholia: Reflections on Regimes through the Journey of Autoethnography and Veterans’ Narratives. MPhil Publications in Race, Ethnicity, Conflict: Trinity College Dublin, 2013. Publication URL: https://www.tcd.ie/sociology/ethnicracialstudies/mphil-publications/
Conference Presentations
Morris, Derek. (Forthcoming 2017). 'Narratives and Memory: The Molding of American Soldier Imaginings.' The Scottish Association for the Study of America Conference, Edinburgh, UK
Morris, Derek. 2015. ‘The Roads Away from Memory and Melancholia: Returning from Iraq.’ Society for the Study of Social Problems Conference, Chicago, IL
Morris, Derek. 2015. ‘The Paths of Autoethnography.’ Southwest Social Science Association Conference, Denver, CO
Morris, Derek. 2014. ‘Autoethnography Along the Way.’ Power, Conflict and Resistance Conference, Trinity College, Dublin
Yuan, May, James Simons, Derek Morris, Sara Gonzalez, and Lesley Williams. 2011. 'Toward species interaction networks. Managing, visualizing and synthesizing Gulf of Mexico geo-spatial trophic data." Environmental Information Management 2011 Conference, Santa Barbara, CA
Research Experience
Research Assistant, NASA Space Grant at The Center for Spatial Analysis, University of Oklahoma
Academic Qualifications
MPhil Race, Ethnicity, Conflict (Distinction), Trinity College, Dublin.
BA Geography, University of Oklahoma
CELTA, Univeristy of Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
Teaching Experience
Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Sociology, University of Oklahoma, 2014-2015