Theatricalising Narrative Research on Women Casual Academics

Gail Crimmins is Lecturer in Communication at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. An experienced actor and director, her research explores and illuminates the lived experiences of women. She employs participatory research methods and re-presents her work through theatre, film and written prose.

This book presents the research journey involved in sensitively unearthing and re-presenting the lived experience of women casual academics. The author weaves the as yet unvoiced stories of women casual academics with a reflective account of a narrative inquiry process. In doing so, she both critiques and offers an alternative to masculine and traditional academic discourse, and demonstrates the power of imagistic and theatrical communication. The book situates the felt human and post-human experience/s of narrative research alongside the philosophical and theoretical research practices encountered in an arts-informed narrative research project. Thus, the author establishes valuable frameworks for planning, undertaking and evaluating arts-informed narrative research; a growing and vibrant area of education research. This innovative work will be of interest to feminist researchers, teachers and supervisors, as well as students and scholars of women casual academics.

Chapter 1. The Silence of Women Casual Academics in Australian Universities.- Chapter 2. The Limitations of Traditional Academic Conventions and an Embrace of Imagistic Communication Orienting my map to north.- Chapter 3. The Philosophical, Ethical and Political Considerations Involved in Theatricalising Data.- Chapter 4. The Plays the Thing Wherein I'll Capture the Consciousness of an Audience.- Chapter 5. A Personal Process of Restorying Lived Experience into a Proto-Verbatim Performance.- Chapter 6. A re-view of the process and impact of theatricalising narrative research on women casual academics.