Beyond the Data: Exploring Lived Experience with Auto-ethnography, I-Poems, and FRDA

Description

This seminar was delivered as part of the Café Scientifique series at the University of Northampton in May 2025, a national initiative aimed at making research accessible to the wider public by breaking down academic barriers and encouraging open dialogue. The session, titled “Beyond the Data: Exploring Lived Experience with Auto-ethnography, I-Poems, and Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis,” introduced qualitative methods that foreground personal narrative, emotion, and relational context as valid forms of evidence. Drawing on doctoral research into mood, perimenopause, and botulinum toxin, the presentation demonstrated how creative and reflective approaches, such as poetic analysis and self-inquiry, can illuminate complex human experiences in ways that traditional methods may overlook. Rooted in feminist and interpretivist traditions, the session aimed to open up new ways of thinking about what counts as evidence, and to engage a non-specialist audience in the value of lived experience as a source of meaningful, rigorous research.

Period	15 May 2025
Event title	Cafe Scientifique
Event type	Seminar
Location	United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	Regional