{"id":12,"date":"2025-09-29T14:25:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T14:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/?page_id=12"},"modified":"2025-09-29T16:16:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T15:16:40","slug":"auto-biography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/auto-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Auto\/biography"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva\">Today, many of us tell our life stories or take part in autobiographical practices. People bring aspects of their lives into the world in many different ways \u2013 through memoirs and blogs, podcasts and performances, community projects and digital platforms. These practices are not simply about telling a life story: they are creative, generative, and often produce valuable resources, new vocabularies and fresh ways of knowing.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva\">Social scientists have long been fascinated by these kinds of practices and forms of storytelling, because it\u2019s never just personal. Every account of a life is shaped by the social worlds we live in\u2014our histories, cultures, and the structures that open space for some voices while silencing others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva\">Scholars like Liz Stanley, Sidonie Smith, and Katrina M. Powell\u00a0remind us that autobiography is not confined to books or formal memoirs \u2013 everyday interactions continually invite people to account for themselves, and invoke ideas of how life should unfold. They\u00a0have shown how autobiographical practices are not simply about recording events, but can also be acts of resistance\u2014challenging the \u201cusual\u201d scripts of a life, and offering different endings and possibilities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva\">What excites me is how autobiographical practices are expanding; becoming newly accessible and circulating through communities and around the world. With blogs, podcasts, social media, and new forms of publishing, life stories have become newly mobile\u2014connecting in ways that were almost unimaginable a few decades ago. Autobiography has re-emerged as a powerful social practice, shaping not just individual identities but collective meaning-making.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva\">My work is about exploring this shift, how and why it matters. I want to think with people who are already doing this kind of work, and as my project unfolds I also want to share some of the ways academics have tried to understand autobiographical work and its significance.\u00a0I hope you\u2019ll find these ideas as inspiring and thought-provoking as I do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, many of us tell our life stories or take part in autobiographical practices. People bring aspects of their lives into the world in many different ways \u2013 through memoirs and blogs, podcasts and performances, community projects and digital platforms. These practices are not simply about telling a life story: they are creative, generative, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":500,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-12","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/500"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12\/revisions\/13"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/follow-the-autobiography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}