Using email as a site to construct narratives through interviews

This paper considers how email interviews can be used as a site and space for participants in research to construct narratives of experience. It will begin by outlining how the researchers came to use the method rather than two other forms of interviewing: – telephone interviewing and face-to-face interviewing. The paper will focus on how email interviewing when used as a tool to construct narratives, provides the opportunity for reflective practice by participants. However, these processes of reflection are enmeshed in tensions that arise from the power differences between the researchers and the other participants and from participants’ concerns about protecting their privacy and anonymity. The paper concludes that email interviewing has the potential to allow the collection of rich, descriptive, contextually-situated data that can support research into people’s histories and narratives. However, its idiosyncratic processes require researchers to think carefully about how they engage with other participants.