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Present projects

I'm Director of the University's Centre for Narrative and Auto/Biographical Studies (NABS). NABS is a research-oriented virtual Centre (http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/NABS/ ) and runs an active programme of workshops, seminars and conferences. The ESRC-funded seminars on Narrative Studies it hosted have resulted in special issues of three journals - Qualitative Research, Sociological Research Online, and Life Writing. I'm presently supervising a number of PhD students whose research is on narrative and auto/biographical topics and welcome inquiries from people who are interested in researching at PhD level in this area.

The main research project I'm currently engaged with is the Olive Schreiner Electronic Epistolarium, funded by the ESRC. The c4500 archived letters of the feminist writer and social theorist Olive Schreiner are being transcribed and will be published in total as an electronic epistolarium, together with an editorial apparatus of footnotes and accompanying bibliographic essays. In addition, the content of the letters is being research and publications have already appeared on these. Please see the project website at www.oliveschreinerletters.ed.ac.uk for more information. There are two PhD studentships attached to the project, and further information on this too will be found on the website. Inquiries from people interested in postgraduate or post-doctoral research on Schreiner's writings, her social theory and her letters are welcome.

My other current research project is 'The Domestication of Death' and is being carried out with Prof Sue Wise from Lancaster University. It has a number of complimentary facets - (1). re-theorising the sequestration argument propounded by Giddens and others; (2) researching representations of 'the ineffible', death itself; (3) exploring the role of domestic figuration in managing dying and death; (4) carrying out a number of case studies from the 1840s to the 2010s. More information will be found on the project website at http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/apsocsci/activities/936/ Proposals for PhD research or postdoctoral work on any aspect of the DOD are welcomed.

Main research interests

Feminist theory & sociological theory.  'The state of sociology', including likely future developments of sociology in any of its domain areas.  Methodology in theory & practice.   Cultural sociology - lives, letters & narrative inquiries, and visual sociology.

 

Publications 

Books

(2011, in press) “Simone de Beauvoir: The Useless Mouths” Translated with an editorial introduction by Liz Stanley & Catherine Naji, in (ed) Margaret A Simons & Mary-Beth Timmerman The Useless Mouths and Other Writings, volume 4 of Simone de Beauvoir: Literary Writings USA: Illinois University Press.

(2009) Mourning Becomes… Post/Memory and the Concentration Camps of the South African War Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

(2006) Mourning Becomes… Post/Memory and the Concentration Camps of the South African War Manchester: Manchester University Press; USA: Rutgers University Press.

(2002) Imperialism, Labour and the New Woman: Olive Schreiner’s Social Theory Durham, UK: sociologypress.

 Special Issues of Journals

‘Narratives, selves and life writings: dialogues, exchanges and commentaries’ Special issue of Life Writing 7: 3 (March 2010), edited by Liz Stanley.

‘Big structures, large processes, huge comparisons – Narratives and stories from minor to major’ (in honour of Charles Tilly) special issue of Sociological Research Online 14: 5 (November 2009), edited by Liz Stanley

‘Narrative Methodologies: Subjects, Silences, Re-Readings and Analyses’ special issue of Qualitative Research 8: 3 (September 2008), edited by Liz Stanley & Bogusia Temple.

Articles & chapters 2004 - 2010

*(2011) “Towards the epistolarium: Issues in researching and publishing the Olive Schreiner epistolarium” (with Helen Dampier) African Research and Documentation: Journal of the SCOLMA 113: 27-32.

*(2010) “Olive Schreiner globalising social inquiry: a feminist analytics of globalization” (with Helen Dampier and Andrea Salter) Sociological Review 58,4: 656-79.

*(2010) “‘Men selling their souls & the future - & fate watching them’ – Olive Schreiner on Union” Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa 64, 3: 121-36 (with Helen Dampier)

*(2010) “To the letter: Thomas & Znanicki’s The Polish Peasant… and writing a life, sociologically speaking” Life Writing 7:2, 137-51.

*(2009) “The number of the South African War (1899-1902) concentration camp dead: Standard stories, superior stories and a forgotten proto-nationalist research investigation” Sociological Research Online 14: 5 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/14/5/13 (with Helen Dampier)

*(2009) “‘Her letters cut are generally nothing of interest’ The heterotopic persona of Olive Schreiner and the alterity-persona of Cronwright-Schreiner” English in Africa 36, 2: 7-30 (with Andrea Salter).

*(2009) “Rethinking “current crisis” arguments: Gouldner and the legacy of critical sociology” Sociological Research Online 14:1 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/14/1/1.html

*(2008) “It has always known and we have always been ‘other’: Knowing capitalism and the ‘coming crisis’ of sociology confront the concentration system and Mass-Observation” Sociological Review 56:4, 535-51.

*(2008) “Madness to the method? Using a narrative methodology to analyse large-scale complex social phenomena” Qualitative Research 8: 3, 435-47.

(2008) “Parallel narratives: Photographs in Boer women’s wartime testimonies” in (eds) David Robinson et al Narratives and Fiction Huddersfield, UK: University of Huddersfield Press: 9-24 (with Helen Dampier).

(2008) “‘She wrote Peter Halket’: Fictive and factive devices in Olive Schreiner’s letters and Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland” in (eds) David Robinson et al Narratives and Fiction Huddersfield, UK: University of Huddersfield Press: 61-71 (with Helen Dampier).

(2008) “Feminist methodology matters!” in (eds) Diane Richardson & Vicki Robinson (3^rd edition) Gender and Women’s Studies Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan pp.221-43 (with S. Wise).

*(2007) “Cultural Entrepreneurs, Proto-Nationalism and Women’s Testimony Writings: From the South African War 1899/1902 to 1948” (with Helen Dampier) Journal of Southern African Studies 33, 3: 501-19.

*(2006) “'Svo sem Í skuggsjÁ, Í ÓljÓsri mynd' - Um tÚlkunarmÖguleika Í lestri Á fortÍÐinni” (“’Through a glass, darkly’ – Interpretational possibilities for reading the past” Icelandic Journal of History Ritid 3/2006: 7-37.

*(2006) “Simulacrum diaries: Time, the ‘moment of writing’ and the diaries of Johanna Brandt-Van Warmelo” (with Helen Dampier) Life Writing 3: 25-52.

*(2006) “The writing of David Hume’s My Own Life: The persona of the philosopher and the philosopher manquÉ” Auto/Biography 14: 320-38.

*(2006) “Putting it into practice: Using feminist fractured foundationalism in researching children in the concentration camps of the South African War” Sociological Research Online (with Sue Wise) 11, 1 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/1/stanley.html (awarded the 2007 Sage Prize for Innovation & Excellence)                                                                                            

(2006) “Commentary: Using feminist fractured foundationalism in researching children in the concentration camps of the South African War” in (ed) Sharlene Hesse-Biber Handbook on Feminist Research (with Sue Wise) Sage Publications, New York, 591-604.

(2006) “Having it all: a future for feminist research” in (eds) Kathy Davis, Mary Evans et al Sage Handbook on Gender & Women’s Studies (with Sue Wise) Sage Publications, London, 430-70.

(2006) “Knowledge, the ‘moment of writing’ and the simulacrum diaries of Johanna Brandt-Van Warmelo” in (eds) Kate Milnes et al Narrative, Memory and Knowledge Huddersfield, UK: University of Huddersfield Press, 27-39 (with Helen Dampier).

*(2005) “Letters as / not a genre” Life Writing 2: 75-101 (with Margaretta Jolly).

 *(2005) “Emily Hobhouse, moral life and the concentration camps of the South African War, 1899-1902” South African Historical Journal 52, pp. 60-81.

*(2005) “A child of its time: hybridic perspectives on othering in sociology” Sociological Research Online 12: 3 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/10/3/stanley.html 

 ***  (2005) “Aftermaths: Post/memory, commemoration and the concentration camps of the South African War 1899-1902” European Review of History, 12, 1, 87-113 (with Helen Dampier).

*(2004) “The epistolarium: on theorising letters and correspondences” Auto/Biography 12, 216-50.

 (2004) “A methodological toolkit for feminist research: analytical reflexivity, accountable knowledge, moral epistemology and being ‘a child of our time’” in (eds) Heather Piper and Ian Stronach Educational Research: Difference and Diversity Aldershot, UK: Gower, pp.3-29.

 *(2004) “Black labour and the concentration system of the South African War” Joernaal vir Eietdse Geskiedenis/Journal of Contemporary History 28, 2, pp.190-213.

 *(2004) “Beyond marriage: “The less said about love and life-long continuance together the better” Feminism & Psychology, 14, pp.332-43 (with Sue Wise).

 

 

 

PhD in Sociology