Narrative curatorships and autobiographical validity: Epistemological transparency and evaluation in social research

Abstract

The act of narrating makes up an epistemological exercise in which the deliberate selection and omission of experiences configure a specific mapping of subjectivity and its trajectory of inquiry. Within autobiographical research, this process is intertwined with evaluation protocols and narrative curatorships that challenge hegemonic validation criteria. While conventional academic standards tend to privilege abstract objectivity, autobiographical epistemologies reclaim the validity of situated knowledge and the singularity of experience as a source of knowledge. This article deploys a curatorship on three Master’s research projects, arguing how they converge into a shared narrative environment that reveals intrinsic “relational” relationships and common-sense plots. The resulting findings create a tension within the sensory and affective dimensions of research, and inscribe in the memory of the Research Group in Education and Cultural Studies (GIEEC) findings that oscillate between the atavistic and the evocative, this reflection proposes that research transcends its status as an external object to consolidate itself as a relational and vital process, where knowledge is inseparable from existence itself.