Dr Ashley Barnwell is Senior Research Fellow in Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences. Her research is based in cultural sociology and social theory, and focuses on the politics of truth-telling and sharing stories in public and private life.
Ashley is interested in sociological aspects of emotions, memory, and narrative, and the role of life writing, personal archives, and literature in sociological research. From 2019–2022, she will be an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow working on the project ‘Family Secrets, National Silences: Intergenerational Memory in Settler Colonial Australia’. This project aims to investigate the inherited family secrets, stories, and memories that inform Australian'sunderstandings of colonial history. It explores how family histories can drive people's political views and promote or stymie national truth-telling.
Ashley is co-author of Reckoning with the Past: Family Historiographies in Postcolonial Australian Literature (with Joseph Cummins, Routledge 2018) and co-editor of Research Methodologies for Auto/Biography Studies (with Kate Douglas, Routledge 2019). She was the 2014 Seymour Scholar for Biography and a 2019 Research Fellow at the National Library of Australia. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at The Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives, University of Manchester, at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, and at the National Centre for Biography at the ANU. With Dr Signe Ravn, Ashley co-directs the Narrative Network, an interdisciplinary forum for scholars working with narrative methods. With A/Prof Kris Natalier, she is co-convener of The Australian Sociological Association's Families & Relationships Thematic Group.
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Projects
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Project Types
3
Internal Research Grant
1
Research Grant
Scholarly Works
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Honours, Awards and Fellowships
The Seymour Scholarship for Biography
Dean's Leadership Award
Research Excellence Award 2011 - 2014
University Medal for Sociology
The Sol Encel Prize for Sociology
Credentials
Positions
Arc Early Career Researcher
Social And Political Sciences
Member
Advisory Committee, Centre for Applied History, Macquarie University
Member
Family and Emotions Research Group, ARC Centre for Excellence on the History of Emotions.
Affiliate Researcher
Affiliate Researcher, SELMA: Centre for the Study of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory, University of Turku
Member
International Auto/Biography Association Asia Pacific Chapter
Member
The Australian Sociological Association
Education
Bachelor of Arts (Sociology)
University of New South Wales
Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology)
University of New South Wales