The key question, with Miles Franklin winner Josephine Wilson on board, was,"How can we better understand and represent their complex voices and stories?"
The technique was first described by U.S. sociologists Laurel Richardson and Laura Ellingson in the 1990s while exploring ideas of merging personal narratives with research. The method also asks for reflection on researchers' roles, and how participants' voices are represented. "The new paper pushes it forward with the illustrations and a more overarching examination of how arts and science collaborations can be not only a fruitful method, but a scientific practice and procedure," says Dr. Neves.
He's a former hospital warden who loves aircraft and flight, but reserves a special disdain for bingo. Patricia , 79, worked in a factory, married a"wonderful man," had four children, and went ballroom dancing. The paper describes her aged care days looking at a row of trees out her window. "Our purpose with this work was to unsettle that very dominant understanding and bring different ways of thinking about the senses. A lot of the work in gerontology is about sensorial decline. We wanted to bring a different way of thinking.
She depicted Patricia as someone being finally asked for her thoughts , remembering her younger days, talking about what it means to be called"frail," and what it means to have one view of the trees, and wondering why no one ever knocks on her door before coming in.