ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors return to some biographically formative spaces and experiences, to examine their ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ – their starting points or the ‘path(s)’ taken as a biographical research method. The Walking Interview as a Biographical Method (WIBM) requires a ‘reflective’ approach, not merely on the ‘research role’ being undertaken, including the relationship with the participant, but also on the wider personal life and its bearing on the research process. The accounts of childhood from Maggie and Brian bring to the fore the relationship between previous experience and how it is understood through forms of memory – a key issue within the study of biographical accounts, including within WIBM. The analysis of biographical accounts is enhanced by the identification of forms of memory and how they interrelate in the ‘composition’ of events, feelings, senses, and relationships; in the ‘telling’ of experience.
