Zine-making as a data collection tool in narrative inquiry

Bio:

Meifang Zhuo is a PhD candidate in ELT and Applied Linguistics in the Department of Applied Linguistics, at the University of Warwick. She is an experienced and award-winning English language teacher and a passionate teacher educator with practices both in China and in the UK. She supports the MA TESOL programme at the University of Warwick as a senior GTA and the MA TESOL (studies) programmes at the University of Leeds as a Dissertation Supervisor. Her research interests lie in language teacher education and development, teacher psychology (identity, wellbeing and burnout), arts-based and visual methodologies. Her research can be found in TESOL Journal, RELC Journal and Research Methods in Applied Linguistics.

Further information: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/people/m-zhuo/

Description of the meeting:

This talk is based on the speaker’s 2024 “I feel my inner child out: Zine-making as a data collection tool in narrative inquiry” in Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. The talk will start with a brief introduction of zines and zine-making with some examples of collective zines to indicate the richness of data for possible research purposes. Following an elaboration of narrative inquiry and the theoretical links between zine-making and narrative inquiry in applied linguistics, this talk presents an empirical study with zine-makers. The findings indicate that zine-making is a fun, creative, ethical, and empowering data collection tool to research people’s life stories. Finally, this talk will end with a call for further discussions and explorations of the use of zine-making in narrative inquiry in and beyond applied linguistics.