Collective biography

Collective biography is an approach to memory work that foregrounds a collective process of remembering and often focuses on childhood memories. This is because the earliest traces of subject formation – of the discourses, practices, rationalities, and socio-material-relational con- texts within which we come to take ourselves up or recognize ourselves in particular ways – can be traced to childhood. Instead of focusing on the psychological or individual subject, collective biography examines processes of subjectification within socio-material worlds by bringing together a group of people to investigate an agreed-upon topic through their memories. In educational research, the topics of concern may be obliquely or directly associated with educational practices or every- day childhood experiences, which are particularly generative for adult educators.