("Who is Kip Jones?" by Experimental Products)
Narrative Research
Performative Social Science
"Changing the way we view Social Science,
one download at a time"
Recently published and available online Special Issue of FQS on
Performative Social Science
The online qualitative journal, FQS, is pleased to announce a special issue on
Performative Social Science published in May 2008.
The issue contains over 100 photographs and almost 50 illustrations,
as well as 36 videos and two audio-recordings.
Diverse textual forms of representation include over 50 poems,
three scripted conversations and a play.
Edited by Kip Jones (Special Issue Editor) and Mary Gergen,
John J. Guiney Yallop, Irene Lopez de Vallejo, Brian Roberts & Peter Wright (Co-Editors),
the Special Issue brings thoughtful reflections on
and manifestations of Performative Social Science (PSS)
to the international readership of FQS.
With 42 articles written by contributors from 13 countries,
the Special Issue establishes a foundational reference
for the performative turn in social science.
FILM: “Social Science finding its muse”
Learn about how Performative Social Science (PSS)
is adding an exciting new dimension to the work of researchers.
The film intersperses interviews with four participants from five AHRC workshops in
PSS held at Bournemouth University with clips of workshop activities.
The film is an 11 minute collaboration between filmmaker, Ben Mallaby and Dr. Kip Jones.
It not only documents activities, but also acts as an exemplar of research capacity building
using tools from the arts and utilisation of the media available to researchers
to reach wider audiences with their work.
Click on the arrow below to view the film
Seventh Qualitative Research Conference
Special Section on Performative Social Science
Keynote Speakers include
Johnny Saldaña
Professor and Associate Director
Arizona State University School of Theatre and Film
Special Guests, Social Psychologists and Authors,
Ken & Mary Gergen
"In Conversation"
Special Guest, Andrew Sparkes, Exeter University
"Autobiographical memories, and the narrative performance of pain"
Register here for the Conference
"When I was a girl, I saved up my stars for my piano lesson successes to trade for movie tickets that could be redeemed at the local theatre. I used to save them for Roy Rogers and Dale Evans movies. She was the only female cowboy movie star, married to Roy in real life.. and I really identified with her".--Mary Gergen 2004.
Click arrow below to begin I studied the Biographic Narrative Interpetive Method with
Papers Using the ARTS as a lens to interpret Mary and Ken Gergen during
Methodological Problems of Biographical Research
If you have comments or suggestions,
email me
You can now join us on an email discussion list
Performative Social Science (PerformSocSci)
The list grew out of a growing interest of a wide range of social scientists
to keep up to date on activities of interest to those
exploring arts and humanities-based methods for use in
the production and dissemination of social science data.
The list has now reaches almost 300 members worldwide and continues to grow.
To join PERFORMSOCSCI
click here and follow the instructions.
Leader, Performative Social Science Group
Centre for Qualitative Research
School of Health & Social Care andThe Media School
Bournemouth University
Bournemouth U.K.
"The goal of my life is to unify serious scholarship and popular culture, even if I break my neck in doing so"
–Kip Jones, paraphrasing composer, Alfred Schnittke
"The present moment is defined by a performative sensibility, by a willingness to experiment with different ways of presenting interview text. . . . It turns interviewees into performers, into persons whose words and narratives are then performed by others".--Norman Denzin, 2001
"Rethinking our relationship within communities and across disciplines such as the arts and humanities offers up opportunities for us to move beyond imitation of 'scientistic' reports in dissemination of our work and look towards means of representation that embrace the humanness of social science pursuits. This creates a clearing in which meaningful dialogue with a wider audience is possible, feedback that is constructive and dialogical in its nature becomes feasible, and dissemination of social science data transforms into something not only convivial, but also even playful. Presentations can then evolve into ways of creating meaningful local encounters and performances, in the best sense of these words".--Kip Jones, 2005
"Elegant and sophisticated, a thoughtful and provocative rendition of how narrative studies can enhance social science work and provide a bridge with humanities and the arts. Impressive. I'm glad I am part of your assemblage". --Mary Gergen 2005
"Beauty is about seduction".
Italian designer, Ettore Sottsass
"A Biographic Researcher in Pursuit of an Aesthetic:
The use of arts-based (re)presentations in 'performative' dissemination of life stories"
in a special issue on Biographical Sociology
in the
Qualitative Sociology Review
The Continuing Development of a Performative Social Science
at Bournemouth's Centre for Qualitative Research
Kip Jones explores a bit of the background of performative social science
and outlines the progress so far in establishing a hub at Bournemouth
for the 'performative' in production and diffusion of qualitative data.
Past and future activities at Bournemouth are highlighted.
Announcements
& Upcoming Presentations
Bournemouth University Centre for Qualitative Research
Biannual Conference, 8-10 Sept 2008
Performative Social Science, Crakow, Poland, 12-14 December, 2008
Sesame Institute
Practice-based Research for Dramatherapists
Performative Methodologies, London, 4 June, 2008
A Taster Masterclass in Performative Social Science
was held at University of Wales - Swansea, 10 April, 2008
A two-day Masterclass in Performative Social Science
with Kip Jones was held
22 & 23 November, 2007 at Bournemouth
Invited participant (workshop)
"How did I get to Princess Margaret?"
Second International Arts-based Educational Research Conference
Graduate School of Education,
University of Bristol, July 5-7, 2007
Invited symposium member
“The Potentials of Performance Methodology” (Virtual Performance)
American Psychological Assoc.(APA) Convention
San Francisco CA, August 17-20, 2007
Invited contributor
on our AHRC workshop series was premiered at the
Qualitative research and arts practice:
The potential for research capacity building
ESRC National Centre for Research Methods Seminar
University of Wales-Cardiff, 18th Sept. 2007
School of Medicine at Swansea University, South Wales
Two-day Colloquium:
"Circles within Circles: Qualitative Methodology and the Arts:
The Researcher as Artist"
was held on Tuesday 19th and Wednesday 20th September 2006
at the University of Wales-Swansea.
View a slideshow from from the conference below
Performative Social Science Workshops
Supported by AHRC, Arts Council England, DTI and ESRC
through the "Nature of Creativity" scheme presented five workshops in Performative Social Science
The Workshop Series afforded opportunities for participants to engage in hands-on experiences of working with concepts and tools from the arts and humanities in producing and disseminating research to wider audiences and/or in expanding teaching and practice—facilitated by artists, poets, performers and filmmakers. A series of five workshops over ten months expanded the means of production and dissemination available to us to in order to move our work to new and more creative levels.
The workshops have been a great success, attracting the particpation of scholars
from more than 27 universities across the UK
The fifth and final workshop was held in June.
It was a day of networking and collaboration, filmed by Ben Mallaby. (View the film at the top of this webpage)
You can see some of Ben's work here.
visited the Centre for Qualitative Research at Bournemouth
on Monday, 6 November 2006
More details here
as in the Centre for Qualitative Research in Bournemouth".
Visiting Scholar, Dr. Daniel Domínguez of Madrid,
reports on his six-week sojourn to the Centre for Qualitative Research,
Summer, 2006.
Report here
Centre for Qualitative Research
School of Health & Social Care andThe Media School
Bournemouth University
Bournemouth U.K.
Honorary Research Fellow
Mary Seacole Research Centre
De Montfort University
Leicester U.K.
Former ESRC Research Fellow
Centre for Evidence in Ethnicity, Health and Diversity (CEEHD)
Associate Book Review Editor (English Language)
Forum: Qualitative Social Research (online journal)
Editorial Note: The Book Review as "Performance"
I also talk about my job as Associate Book Review Editor in a short piece entitled,
Tense, Tension and Time:
Musings From a Copy Editor (English) in the Long Now
Performative Narratives presented at various conferences
over the past several years by Kip Jones
"The One About Princess Margaret"
Place: New York City
Time: 1965
An auto-ethnography/auto-biography/auto-ephemera audio/visual production
that describes its creator as a member of a culture at a
specific time and place: being queer in 1965 on one night in New York City
at a famous (straight) mod nightclub, “Arthur”. Themes include
being different, the celebration of being an outsider, seeing oneself from
outside of the “norm”, and the interior conflicts of “coming out”
within a continuum as a (gay) male in a straight world.
These observations are set within the flux and instability of a period of
great social change, but which are often viewed in retrospect as
consistent and definable. Being straight or being gay can also be
viewed in a similar way within the wider culture’s need to set up a
sexual binary and force sexual “choice” decision-making for the
benefit of the majority culture. As auto-ephemera, it documents minor
transient personal moments of everyday life: something transitory, lasting
a day. Through the device of the fleeting moment, the story
interrogates the certainties and uncertainties of the “norms” of
modernity.
Click on the arrow (>) below to view the videoRecently uploaded to Leicester University's
ESRC Training Researchers in Online Research Methods (TRI-ORM) site
Rough Talk and Chocolate Brownies
in which I talk about the creative decision-making process involved in writing and producing
“The one about Princess Margaret” for the World Wide Web
Recently published in the qualitative journal, FQS
"How did I get to Princess Margaret and How Did I Get Her to the World Wide Web"
Includes the script (and footnoted background research) for
"The One about Princess Margaret"
"The Art of Collaborative Storytelling:
arts-based representations of narrative contexts"
by Kip Jones
discusses the video presentations below:
Thoroughly Post-Modern Mary
A Biographic Narrative Interview with Mary Gergen
by Kip Jones
View the movie version with sound!
For best viewing, play full screen.
"I Can Remember the Night"
Son of Polly ("Carl and the little sandwiches" Story)
"Fall River" a renarration of photographs by Richard Rinaldi
Narratives of Identity
and the Informal Care Role
Now online! Read entire thesis here (large pdf file)
De Montfort University awarded me a PhD in Health & Community Studies on 12 December 2001.
The results of over three years of work are also available in the
De Montfort University libraries (Main and Charles Frears Campuses)
and the Mary Seacole Research Centre at Charles Frears Campus.
"The turn to a narrative knowing of persons: One method explored"
with a Review by Robert Miller, University of Belfast
An earlier version of this paper is availablehere
and includes the bulk of the Method Chapter from the Thesis.
Just published (2006) in The Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 13 (2), 214-220
"Informal care as relationship: the case of the Magnificent Seven"
Prue Chamberlayne and Tom Wengraf.
"The Verismo of the Quotidian:
A biographic narrative interpretive approach
to two diverse research topics"
by E. Bolton, Z. Vorajee (nee Essat) & K. Jones
Chapter in:
and Team Analysis of Narrative Qualitative Data"
by Kip Jones
Chapter inNew Qualitative Methodologies in Health and Social Care
F.L. Rapport (ed)Routledge London
Doctors accounts of the SARS epidemic"
by Eugene Wu, Frances Rapport, Kip Jones, Trish Greenhalgh
Chapter inNarrative Research in Health & Illness
T. Greenhalgh, B. Hurwitz & V. Skultans (eds)
London: BMJ Books
Other Works by Kip Jones
Systematic Reviews of Qualitative Evidence
in Ethnicity, Health & Diversity
Examining 'race' in health research: the case for 'listening' to language
Published in Diversity in Health and Social Care,
Volume 3, Number 1, March 2006, pp. 35-41(7)
The Qualitative Report, V. 9, No. 1, pp. 94-111
Qualitative Review Methods paper:
Mission Drift in Qualitative Research, Or
Moving toward a systematic review of qualitative studies,
moving back to a more systematic narrative review
CEEHD Systematic Review papers by KIP JONES:
Diversities in Approach to End-of-Life:
A view from Britain of the qualitative literature
The final version of this paper was published in the July 2005 issue of the Journal of Research in Nursing
and is available on the journal's Sage website
Annotated Bibliography:
Qualitative review of end-of-life and ethnicity/race/diversity
Websites of interest
to end-of-life researchers and policy-makersGeborgenheit in a Paradise Garden: The architecture of the Bromley-by-Bow Centre
A LITERATURE REVIEW AND CASE STUDY
produced for NHS Estates
Social Science data:
The Spiritual Dimension:
a gerotranscendental take on Akira Kurosawa's film, "Ran"
paper presented at
International Association of Gerontology
34th EBSSRS symposium on Ageing and Diversity
Bergen, Norway 31 August 2002
PDF version of paper available hereThe Spiritual Dimension . . .
Also now available onLars Tornstam's Theory of Gerotranscendence website.
"The Birth of Constructionism! or
On a Train from Morgantown,
West Virginia, 1976,
with Klaus Riegel & Kenneth Gergen"
An audio fantasy in one act
By Kip Jones
Presented at the Free University of Berlin
February 2002
REVISED version of the script is
the author's visit to their home in July 2003.
International Sociological Association
Kassel Germany
24-26 May 2001"Beyond the Text: An Artaudian take on the non-verbal clues
revealed within the biographical interpretive process"
by Kip Jones
Volume 1, No. 3 - December 2000
Big Science or The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even"
Review Essay:
Wendy Hollway & Tony Jefferson (2000)
Doing Qualitative Research Differently
Free Association, Narrative and the Interview MethodCommunity of Science ProfileSocial Psychology Network Professional Profile 
My most recent CV is available by
emailing me
Centre for Narrative Research
Narrative Psychology Internet and Resource Guide
The Virtual Faculty The Discursive Turn in Psychology
Lots of links to papers, etc.
Ken Gergen's webpage
many of his papers on-line here under Recent Manuscripts
Qualitative Research Web Ring