Elizabeth Chappell developed a research methodology that allows survivors of the Hiroshima bombing, known as hibakusha, to share their stories within the framework of narrative inquiry and cross-cultural interviewing. As a narrative researcher, she examines the local context to understand what survivors do and do not discuss about their experiences. She also analyzes whether certain aspects of language and description in the Japanese context restrict survivors' stories to a standard narrative. By co-constructing life narratives with survivors, Chappell disrupts notions of autobiography as a single achievement and views narration as more than just facts. She conducts in-depth interviews with survivors and returns to locations of their experiences to elicit different memories and

1. Engaging Research blog
The Last Survivors of Hiroshima, an interdisciplinary PhD © Elizabeth Chappell
In a recent talk for the Open University, in December 2015, I outlined how I developed a research
methodology which allows for the voices of survivors, hibakusha, to be heard with the wider
framework of narrative enquiry and cross cultural interviewing.
Elizabeth Chappell giving a talk at the Open University, Betty Boothroyd Library, 5 December 2015
As a researcher into life stories, I see my role as a narrative enquirer – allowing a full examination of
the local context to lead me to focus on what does and does not get said about what, why, how and to
whom. With an eye to the wider global media landscape, I can also ask whether, in the Japanese
context, certain aspects of language and description fix the survivors’ lives and experiences within a
certain ‘learned narrative’, the ‘usual spiel’ of survivors. I look at how a more personal use of
language and questioning in the Japanese context, leads to a more fluid and idiosyncratic mode of
storytelling and narrative. By co-constructing life narratives with the survivors I am also disrupting
traditional notions of autobiography as the ‘summit of a person’s achievement’ and see how
autobiographical narration cannot be read as solely one person’s story or as simple facts. I not only
researched the background to the interviewees’ lives using the archive, I also returned, with the
interviewees, to the place where the interviewee had experienced the atomic bombing. This allowed a
different kind of life story and memories to emerge. Thus rather than memory being seen as a passive
repository, or ‘warehouse of the past’ or the self as ‘fixed’ or a ‘production’, this study looks at the
process of ‘doing memory’, which fits well with the view of identity as constantly in process and a
model of interviewing which is ‘dialogical’, a richer form of qualitative research.

2. I also recently had the opportunity to talk about my research on BBC World TV
https://vimeo.com/152171607. I also spoke at the British Sociological Association Christmas
Conference, and will be writing for their journal, Auto/Biography:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raut20#.VqJBfPmLRdg June 2016 issue. Earlier last year I gave a
talk at Cardiff University as part of their Hiroshima commemorations:
http://sites.cardiff.ac.uk/events/view/hiroshima-week-seminar-hiroshima-70-years-on/
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Cenotaph