Single mother self-recorded life narratives: a method

This paper sets out the context for an innovative social research method for a PhD project on the role of higher education in the life trajectory of disadvantaged single mothers. This new method for producing oral life stories recognises the ontological role of narratives as well the performative effect of social research methods by capturing the voices of single mothers involved in reflection and sense-making of their lives, in their own time and their own place, using a digital audio recorder. It is anticipated that encouraging autobiographical agency in this way will produce a deeper level of narrative reflection and more intimate accounts of the lives of single mothers as narrators that might otherwise be achieved with other methods such as the life story interview.