Staring at the Park ─ A Poetic Autoethnographic Inquiry

Acclaimed qualitative scholar Jane Speedy’s world was upended completely after suffering a severe stroke when only in her late 50s. After returning home from the hospital, Speedy took to her iPad to write and draw as a way of making sense of her experience and to aid her recovery. The stunning, fragmented, poetic text and images comprising Staring at a Park depict the events of this difficult journey. It provides an alternative model of engaging the self in a research project in an evocative and artistic way. This highly original book: <br>-uses the seemingly ordinary motif of the park opposite the author’s house as the catalyst for a wildly creative autoethnography;<br>-includes three narratives of the author’s experience of staring at the park?an imagined murder mystery in the park, a realist ethnography of the park, and the life story (both imagined and real) of her facing her illness and recovery; <br>-offers readers a poetic and performative inquiry into the author’s new reality.

Prolific scholar Jane Speedy maintains an international reputation for developing innovative interdisciplinary qualitative research methodologies. Professor Emeritus in the Department of Education at the University of Bristol, she teaches narrative inquiry and other research methods at the intersection of arts and social sciences. Her current focus is on collaborative writing and various forms of collaborative text production, including collective biography, writing as inquiry, and juxtapositions of various visual and written textual forms. She has a particular interest in web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs, wikis, and Twitter as sites for radical collaborations. Jane was also the coordinator of the Narrative Inquiry Centre in the School of Education at the University of Bristol. She is author of Narrative Inquiry and Psychotherapy and coauthor of Collaborative Writing as Inquiry.