Southern Celts is my practice-led PhD narrative inquiry in which I created a book of interview narratives of women and men with Scottish and Irish backgrounds who live in Aotearoa New Zealand. Accompanying this I wrote an exegesis exploring decisions made in this process, placing them in wider academic discussions. These two texts are underpinned by insights drawn from literatures on narrative as method and text, autoethnography, the discursive construction of culture and identity and writing as method.
I will focus on my use of two metaphors: a crystal (Richardson 2000, 2005) and the spirals used in more traditional Celtic art. Finally, I reflect on how the realisation that the Maori word whenua, which means ‘land’ and ‘umbilical chord,’ enabled me to draw together themes of place, land, time and personal identity.
Centre for Languages Nov 02 2016.