Situated Writing as Theory and Method by Mona Livholts

Situated Writing as Theory and Method by Mona Livholts

This creative and original book develops a framework for situated writing as theory and method, and presents a trilogy of untimely academic novellas as exemplars of the uses of situated writing.

It is an inter- and trans-disciplinary book in which a diversity of forms are used to create a set of interwoven novellas, inspired by poststructuralist and postcolonial feminist theory and literary fiction, along with narrative life writing genres such as diaries and letters, memory work, poetic writing, and photography. The book makes use of a politics of location, situated knowledges, diffraction, and intersectionality theories to promote situated writing as a theory and method for exploring the complexity of social life through gender, whiteness, class, and spatial location.

It addresses writing as an inter- and trans-disciplinary form of scholarship in its own right, with emancipatory potential, emphasising the role of writing in shaping creative, critical, and reflexive approaches to research, education, and professional practice. It is useful for researchers, teachers, postgraduate and PhD students in feminist and intersectionality studies, narrative studies, and pursuing interdisciplinary approaches across the humanities, social sciences, design, and the arts to inspire a theory and method for situated writing.

Read the December 2019 issue of Reading Writing Quarterly, where Mona Livholts reads Hélène Frichot and Hélène Frichot reads Mona Livholts: https://site-readingwritingquarterly.co.uk/december-2019

"Livholts’s academic work has been about changing social work from within through creative writingIt is her way of seeking answers to things like which questions should be posed, what can be known and by whom, and what counts as knowledge."

Christa M Mäkinen, Communication specialist, University of Helsinki

"This is an excellent book that, apart from the pleasure of the text, also offers a great variety of ideas for graduate reflexive methodological and writing workshops. Livholts has used materials from this book in her teaching and in the last section of Part II, she has compiled a very useful list of open questions and concerns in guiding ‘situated writing’."

Tamboukou, M. 2020. 'Situated Writing as Theory and Method: The Untimely Academic Novella: a book review from the journal’s editor'. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work. SAGE Journals

Mona Livholts, PhD, is Professor of Social Work in the Department of Social Sciences, Helsinki University, Finland; founder and leader of The Network for Reflexive Academic Writing Methodologies (RAW) 2008–2017. Her research focuses on emergent writing methodologies in a context of method transformation saturated by gender-, inter- and transdisciplinarity, creative and art-based methods, in particular auto/biographical and narrative life writing genres such as diaries and letters, memory work, poetry, and photography. Research themes include media narratives on rape, gender, space, and communication, and glocalised social work. She has published books in Swedish and English including: Genus och det akademiska skrivandets former [Gender and Forms of Academic Writing] (Eds with Bränström Öhman 2007), Emergent Writing Methodologies in Feminist Studies (2012), Discourse and Narrative Methods: Theoretical Departures, Analytical Strategies and Situated Writing (with Tamboukou 2015), and Social Work in a Glocalised World (with Bryant 2017).