Paper Seminar: Storytelling, Giving an Account of Oneself

The Paper Seminar series is a perfect opportunity to get up to speed with the entrepreneurship research scene and meet and greet your fellow researchers.

We follow the traditional approach with 30-45 minutes of presentation, followed by comments and discussion.

Abstract

Story is the medium par excellence for communicating experience, incorporating as it does cognitive content in an aesthetic experience designed to express richer, more coherent alternatives to everyday pictures of the world. This is why our greatest thinkers tend to be also accomplished storytellers, able to communicate their ideas in a story whose point readers/listeners establish for themselves. A storyteller combines events into sequences and sequences into a story. The question is: how? The two main principles of combination are temporal succession (the “and then” principle) and causality (the “that’s why” or “therefore” principle). Recent narrative theorists draw a distinction between story (histoire) and discourse (discours). This seminar will introduce you to some of the basic features of narrative such as time, structure, voice, causality and point of view, and provide you with tips for how to engage your audience by structuring the account you give of yourself, your concept, company, research proposal, or pitch on tried and tested storytelling principles which have endured from the beginning of recorded history. In considering the question of the nature of story, therefore, we are reflecting on the core values and qualities of a concept or experience, the very nature of culture and, possibly, on the nature of human knowledge itself. The seminar assumes that entrepreneurs are ideally positioned to develop and communicate distinctive stories, and thereby to address audiences beyond established constituencies.

Biography

Dr. Rolf Hughes is Professor in Design Theory and Practice-Based Research at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design. He is also Senior Professor in Research Design at the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture (Brussels & Ghent, Belgium), where he has helped create a new pan-European practice-led, Ph.D. programme for designers, artists and architects. He holds the UK’s first Ph.D. in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia, sponsored by the British Academy, and has been interested in developing innovative research methods and accounts ever since.

Rolf, who joined SSES in 2010, has taught and lectured in the UK, USA, Canada, France, Belgium, and the Nordic countries. He was elected Vice President of the Society of Artistic Research (2011-present), and elected onto the Artistic Research Committee for the National Research Council (Vetenskasrådet), Sweden (2010-present). He has worked with Ronald Jones to devise, develop and teach the Experience Design MFA at Konstfack since its inception, and he remains on the faculty.