Brian Roberts – författare

"Brian Roberts’ book is a highly accessible introduction to biographical method…The author deftly and confidently addresses the available work in a variety of disciplines ranging from education through oral history, feminism to memory… I warmly recommend this book to any historian interested in biography and what its study can tell them about what they do’. - Alun Munslow, Professor of History, Staffordshire University (Editor, Rethinking History), Rethinking History, 7:3, pp. 451-5, October, 2003

* What is biographical research?* Why has it attracted so much interest?* How can biographical research be carried out?Biographical Research reflects a rapid expansion of interest in the study of lives taking place within the social sciences. Life story, oral history, narrative, autobiography, biography and other approaches are being used more and more to explore how individuals interpret experiences and social relationships.

This book examines the methodological and theoretical developments associated with research on lives in sociology, oral history, ethnography, biography, and narrative analysis. The author includes numerous examples of biographical research from his own work and other studies, and addresses important areas such as the collection and interpretation of materials, uses of biographical research, oral and written accounts, the interview relationship, the construction of the story, memory, audience, and the researcher's own biography. In conclusion it draws out common themes and emerging concerns. Biographical Research is a comprehensive guide to major issues in the study of lives for students and researchers in the social sciences and related fields.

Originally published in 1977. This book is a comprehensive account of the state of knowledge about autism in the 1970s. Its main emphases are the special needs of autistic children and everyday aspects of dealing with them – how to manage, teach and ‘treat’ them. As such, it will be of particular value for teachers and parents, but equally important for GPs, paediatricians, child psychiatrists and psychologists and anyone else playing a role in the diagnosis and care of these children.

In the opening chapters, the two editors discuss the diagnosis of autism and the specific techniques used when dealing with problems of learning and behaviour in autistic children from early childhood to adolescence. The various contributors, also specialists in the field, then draw on their own particular knowledge and expertise to cover research, the ancillary services which are available, and useful techniques for working with older autistic persons.

Originally published in 1977. This book is a comprehensive account of the state of knowledge about autism in the 1970s. Its main emphases are the special needs of autistic children and everyday aspects of dealing with them – how to manage, teach and ‘treat’ them. As such, it will be of particular value for teachers and parents, but equally important for GPs, paediatricians, child psychiatrists and psychologists and anyone else playing a role in the diagnosis and care of these children.

In the opening chapters, the two editors discuss the diagnosis of autism and the specific techniques used when dealing with problems of learning and behaviour in autistic children from early childhood to adolescence. The various contributors, also specialists in the field, then draw on their own particular knowledge and expertise to cover research, the ancillary services which are available, and useful techniques for working with older autistic persons.

WHITEFELLA DREAMING: ESSAYS IN SEARCH OF BLACKFELLA TRUTHS is Dr Brian Roberts’ second collection of essays challenging Australia’s Indigenous policies. He sets the record straight on the evolution of intelligent species, Indian and Mungo ancestors, and the serious divide between Indigenous traditionalists and modernists, exemplifying Philip Roberts, a Northern Territory ambulance driver and Elder as an individual successfully integrating two worlds. Noel Pearson and Marcus Waters are compared as torchbearers for opposing worldviews on Aboriginal traditionalism. An in-depth study of Sovereignty, explores two very different scenarios of an ‘Aboriginalia’ nation north of latitude 16.

Dr Roberts’ long experience of academia shines through in the chapters on Indigenous Studies and the pitfalls of what Professor Marcia Langton sees as potential refuges from reality within Indigenous Centres. He acknowledges the dire need for health, education, housing and justice in Aboriginal communities, but recognises the far-reaching effects of fundamentalism on three neglected modern policy areas: Separatism, Tribal Identity and Elder Governance.

Raised alongside tribal people, and a refugee from apartheid, Dr Roberts’ writing might be considered offensive by some but is offered in the spirit of contributing a factual basis to the Australian racial non-debate.

This major new text provides an introduction to the interaction of culture and society with the landscape and environment. It offers a broad-based view of this theme by drawing upon the varied traditions of landscape interpretation, from the traditional cultural geography of scholars such as Carl Sauer to the ''new'' cultural geography which has emerged in the 1990s. The book comprises three major, interwoven strands. First, fundamental factors such as environmental change and population pressure are addressed in order to sketch the contextual variables of landscapes production. Second, the evolution of the humanised landscape is discussed in terms of processes such as clearing wood, the impact of agriculture, the creation of urban-industrial complexes, and is also treated in historical periods such as the pre-industrial, the modern and the post-modern. From this we can see the cultural and economic signatures of human societies at different times and places. Finally, examples of landscape types are selected in order to illustrate the ways in which landscape both represents and participates in social change.The authors use a wide range of source material, ranging from place-names and pollen diagrams to literature and heritage monuments. Superbly illustrated throughout, it is essential reading for first-year undergraduates studying historical geography, human geography, cultural geography or landscape history.

This book introduces and critically explores walking as an innovative method for doing social research, showing how its sensate and kinaesthetic attributes facilitate connections with lived experiences, journeys and memories, communities and identities. The book situates walking methods historically, sociologically, and in relation to biographical and arts-based research, as well as new work on mobilities, the digital, spatial, and the sensory.

The book is organised into three sections: theorising; experiencing; and imagining walking as a new method for doing biographical research. There is a key focus upon the Walking Interview as a Biographical Method (WIBM) on the move to usefully explore migration, memory, and urban landscapes, as part of participatory, visual, and ethnographic research with marginalised communities and artists and as re-formative and transgressive. The book concludes with autobiographical walks taken by the authors and a discussion about the future of the walking interview as biographical method.

Walking Methods combines theory with a series of original ethnographic and participatory research examples. Practical exercises and a guide to using walking as a method help to make this a rich resource for social science researchers, students, walking artists, and biographical researchers.

This book introduces and critically explores walking as an innovative method for doing social research, showing how its sensate and kinaesthetic attributes facilitate connections with lived experiences, journeys and memories, communities and identities. The book situates walking methods historically, sociologically, and in relation to biographical and arts-based research, as well as new work on mobilities, the digital, spatial, and the sensory.

The book is organised into three sections: theorising; experiencing; and imagining walking as a new method for doing biographical research. There is a key focus upon the Walking Interview as a Biographical Method (WIBM) on the move to usefully explore migration, memory, and urban landscapes, as part of participatory, visual, and ethnographic research with marginalised communities and artists and as re-formative and transgressive. The book concludes with autobiographical walks taken by the authors and a discussion about the future of the walking interview as biographical method.

Walking Methods combines theory with a series of original ethnographic and participatory research examples. Practical exercises and a guide to using walking as a method help to make this a rich resource for social science researchers, students, walking artists, and biographical researchers.

Rooted in a long and diverse genealogy, biographical approaches have developed from a focus upon a single story, a ‘life story’ and personal documents (e.g. diaries), to encompass (more routinely) autobiographical secondary and archival research and analysis - as well as multi-media, arts based creative multi-sensory methods. Biographical Research and practices as part of human understanding helps people to make sense of what has been and what is happening in their lives, cultures, communities and societies.

Advances in Biographical Methods: Creative Applications takes up these themes: theorising, doing and applying current advances in biographical methods. It demonstrates the momentum with which they areas are developing as a field of scholarship, especially in relation to creative innovations and applications, such as in new forms of interview and other practices, and debates on its interlinking with art, performance and digital methods.