Inaugural lecture: Selma Porobić

Inaugural lecture by dr. Selma Porobić
Classroom 801, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FFRI), University of Rijeka
Sveučilišna avenija 4, 51000 Rijeka

TITLE: Exploring the world through self-reflection: from analytical autoethnography to an integrative multimethod approach to studying war and forced migration

Autoethnography is a method of autobiographical writing that allows researchers to investigate their own group or personal experiences, critically examining cultural beliefs and practices. It values relationships and employs deep self-reflection to connect the self with society, the specific with the general, and the personal with the political. The primary goal often emphasises social justice, showcasing how individuals and groups navigate decisions and understand challenges while highlighting emotion and creativity. In this class, dr. Porobić will share her approach to analytic autoethnography as an epistemological tool for understanding forced migration through lived experience. This approach involves a constantly active self-reflective process, which primarily leads to generating specific research questions and subsequently informs the choice of qualitative methods, such as narrative interviews and participatory observations, for data collection. Dr. Porobić will detail her researcher positionality using five case studies to reflect on the core tenets of the analytic autobiographical approach: being a full member of the research setting while also committing to theoretical understandings of the broader social context. These five case studies reflect 20 years of her transdisciplinary work on traumatology and forced migration, highlighting diverse individual and community experiences through various gender and (trans)generational perspectives: i) three generations of exiled Tibetan women in India, ii) complex trauma and resilience among Bosnian refugees in Sweden, iii) returnees and post-war recovery in Bosnia, iv) psychosocial well- being of war-displaced women in Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo, and v) ongoing social trauma and peace education research in Ukraine. Although dr. Porobić have consistently utilised analytic ethnography in her research, it has proven especially valuable in progressively developing an integrative multi-method approach to derive theory from empirical data and unveil the intricate realities of trauma and the long-term recovery process following forced migration, which involves transactional dimensions across time and space. It has also deepened my understanding of the traumatology framework in relation to social institutions, particularly the role of educational institutions in the aftermath of war and forced migration. This shift has redirected my research focus toward transformative justice (rather than transitional justice) and the role of peace education in helping us to engage with the lived experience of injustice by connecting the past to our present context awareness.