Why does narrative matter?
Narrative + psychology, politics, sociology, gerontology, narratology, history, philosophy, education, medicine, social work, religious studies, gender studies, culture studies, ethics, literary theory, theater, and the arts.
A growing, international + interdisciplinary community of academics + professionals asking questions about narrative & why it matters.
Today, narrative reaches far beyond its literary origins.
Narrative inquiry provides insight into how we provide medical care, how we arrive at self-identity, how political power is brokered, how we teach — and learn, how we age, how we design technology and how we address current and historical social injustice (to name a few).
As the Narrative Turn has continued a community has grown — of academics and practitioners positioned outside disciplines that traditionally include narrative, yet incorporating narrative into their work. Rather than isolating narrative within each discipline, this disaggregated community looks to narrative discoveries in other disciplines for points of convergence that reveal more about why narrative matters.
Narrative Matters Conference
The Narrative Matters conference is an international, interdisciplinary conference bringing hundreds of narrative scholars and practitioners together every two years around a current theme.
The 2023 conference was hosted by the University of Tampere in Finland, with the theme “The Storytelling Boom”. More than 300 delegates from across the globe attended. Learn more.
