You are cordially invited to attend the Inaugural Professorial Lecture by Professor Bernie Carter, Professor of Children's Nursing, Edge Hill University.

Title: "Oh, the stories you’ll tell’: research adventures with Lily and other children"

The lecture will take place on Tuesday 11 February 2025 at 17.30 in the Council Chamber, Lanyon Building, QUB, followed by a reception in the Canada Room.

We live in a world full of stories. We navigate our lives through telling, sharing, and learning from stories. Stories are dynamic, idiosyncratic, and sometimes life-changing. They are formed and reformed though life experiences, the contexts in which they are told, and the responses they elicit. Stories can create connections and understanding, situating storyteller and story-listener in-relation to each other.

However, stories occur in landscapes of power. Too often stories are marginalised because the storyteller is considered unreliable, their story trivial, predictable, or hard to hear. Children were positioned as inarticulate and incompetent storytellers; the truth is very different.

But the stories children (and their families) tell about their pain, their illness, their distress, and their lives can illuminate ways in which nurses and other health professionals can create therapeutic bonds. Thinking about how to respond and act, we can become a positive presence in their stories.

As a story-based researcher, it’s a privilege to listen to and learn from stories and to share what I’ve learnt.

About the speaker