The power and possibility of narrative research: Challenges and opportunities

From the very conception of this book project, we have been concerned about the confusion that can arise for novice researchers due to the lack of transparen-cy in the various ways narrative methods are theorised and applied. As we have seen in the previous chapters, research that is informed by narrative can take a variety of forms, and may be called any number of things (narrative inquiry, nar-rative studies, narrative research, narrative focus). As Rachael and elke pointed out in Chapter 1 (this volume), this can be viewed both a strength and a weak-ness: as diverse applications of a flexible approach, and/or as inconsistent inter-pretations of theory. There are certainly examples of both, and the difference is not always clear. Our intention in this chapter is to explore the current and future perspectives on working with narrative methods , by drawing on the perspectives of leading scholars in the field. With this in mind, we approached three established scholars of narrative re-search – Michael Bamberg who is currently Professor of Psychology at Clark Uni-versity (United States) and editor of the journal Narrative Inquiry, Maria Tam-boukou who works from the University of East London and heads up the Narra-tive Research Centre there and Debbie Pushor who is based at the University of Saskatchewan (Canada) and previously worked with Jean Clandinin. The inter-viewees were chosen to, we hoped, represent a diverse range of perspectives re-garding the history, practice and future direction of the narrative method.