Professor Molly Andrews
Professor of Political Psychology
Social Sciences
Professor of Political Psychology, Department of Social Sciences and Co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research. For the academic year 2019-2020 Molly Andrews will be the Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki.
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University of East London
Docklands Campus
University Way
London, E16 2RD
United Kingdom
E16 2RD - m.andrews@uel.ac.uk +44208232792
Molly Andrews is Professor of Political Psychology and Co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research. With an interest in the intersection of individual biography and society, for the past twenty years she has been listening to, and writing about, the stories which people tell about their lives, specifically focussing on their perception of the political world and their role within it.
Molly's research explores the implicit political worldviews which individuals impart through the stories they tell about their lives, as well as the wider social and political context which makes some stories more ‘tell-able’ than others.She has conducted research projects in Britain (life histories with lifetime socialists), the United States (analyzing anti-war activism as an expression of patriotism), East Germany (accounting for national identity in the context of the demise of one’s country) and South Africa (examining testimonies before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission). She was co-investigator on the “Narratives of Varied Everyday Lives and Linked Approaches,” (NOVELLA) project. Funded by the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, NOVELLA conducts research concerned with the everyday practices of families and is a collaboration between UEL’s Centre for Narrative Research, the Institute of Education and Oxford University.
Molly’s work has been translated in to Chinese, German, Swedish, German, French and Spanish. In 2008, her book, Shaping history: Narratives of political change (2007 Cambridge University Press) received the outstanding book of the year award from the American Education Research Association, Narrative and Research Special Interest Group.
She has a degree in Political Science from Tufts University (Massachusetts), a Masters in Education from Harvard University, and a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge.
Molly has been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and received a University Teaching Fellowship since UEL in 2011.External committee membership
- Editorial Board, Qualitative Psychology, from 2013.
- Editorial Board, Political Psychology, from 2010.
- Editorial Board, Journal fűr Psychologie: Theorie, Forschung, Praxis, from 2010.
- Editorial Board, Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations, & Interventions, from 2010.
Editorial Board, Narrative Inquiry from 2019.
Editorial Board, Aging and Society from 2018.
Editorial Board, Journal of Narrative Politics from 2013. - Conference organizing committee, International Society of Political Psychology, Paris 2008.
- Governing Council, International Society for Political Psychology (2006-2009 )
- Chair, Dissertation Award Committee, International Society for Political Psychology, 2008-9
Advisory Boards
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Advisory Board, Paris Centre for Narrative Matters, from October, 2015.
Advisory Board, Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies, Tampere, Finland, from June 2014.
Advisory Board ESRC funded project “Understanding the Impact of Physical Activity on Experiences and Perceptions of (Self-) Ageing (everyday title "Moving Stories"), from September 2011-2014. - Advisory Board, Youth Empowering Parents (YEP), supported by $63,100 grant from Social Investment Fund of Toronto Community Housing Corporation. Recipient of Intercultural Innovation Award (2011) of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Programme. http://interculturalinnovation.org/the-award/Advisory board, Major Leverhulme Grant, ‘Gendered Ceremony and Ritual in Parliaments: India, South Africa and Westminster ’ 2007-2011.
- Advisory board, Major ESRC award programme on Identities and Social Action Programme: Identity, Performance and Social Action: The Use of Community Theatre Among Refugees April 2005 – March 2008
- Advisory Board for `Surviving prison in later life' (ESRC) 2002-2004
- Advisory Committee, Clark/Holy Cross Consortium on Narrative (2004 -
Overview
Professor Molly Andrews is co-director of the Centre for Narrative Research.
Her research explores the implicit political worldviews which individuals impart through the stories they tell about their lives, as well as the wider social and political context which makes some stories more ‘tell-able’ than others. She has conducted research projects in Britain (life histories with lifetime socialists), the United States (analyzing anti-war activism as an expression of patriotism), East Germany (accounting for national identity in the context of the demise of one’s country) and South Africa (examining testimonies before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission).
Molly has published more than 50 articles and book chapters, including in Spanish, Czech and German.
Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life
Molly’s latest monograph 'Narrative Imagination and Everyday Life', (2014 Oxford University Press) explores the links between stories and imagination and how they affect the way we live, focusing specifically on ageing, education and politics.
It is the first book to study in detail the role that imagination plays in narrative psychology and combines personal reflection with scholarly research.
Read Molly’s blog post for Oxford University Press.
Listen to Molly’s podcast for the National Centre for Research Methods.
Research
Publications
Grants and Recent awards
Co-investigator, “Narratives of Varied Everyday Lives and Linked Approaches,” (NOVELLA) ESRC-funded, National Centre for Research Methods Phase III node, £1,292.164; 2011-2014.
Fellow, Higher Education Academy, Standard Descriptor 3. Awarded 2011.
University Teaching Fellow, University of East London. 2011.
2008 Outstanding book of the year award, American Education Research Association Narrative and Research Special Interest Group.
Funding
Psychosocial basis of political commitment
Gender and aging
Generations
Counter-narratives
Political psychology of Forgiveness
Psychological challenges associated with acute political change
Collective memory/ Politics of memory
Patriotism
Life histories
Feminist methodology
Interests
Molly teaches at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level.
Programmes
BA Sociology
MA Narrative Research
PhD
Current PhD students
Michelle Harewood "Exploring narratives of power, rights and agency: The case of British Caribbeans in the UK"
Alice Mukaka "Feminist Organizing for Migrant Rights" (UEL PhD studentship)
Masihza Vaala "The Silence and the Screams: Iranian youth and
the Nation’s Traumatic Past"
Former PhD students
Ali Ali: The Determinants of Migration Decisions Amongst Iraqi Refugees
Celine Cantat, “Contesting Europeanism: Discourses and Praxes of Migrants’ Organisations in the European Union”
Kathleen Coppens: Back home? Social integration and coping with trauma in former child soldiers in Northern Uganda (jointly supervised with Vrije Universiteit Brussel; funded by the Belgium Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Cigdem Esin: The Norms of Gendered Sexuality of Young Women in Turkish Society and the Underlying Cultural Factors
Mastoureh Fathi: Class narratives of Iranian Women Migrants in Britain
Solveigh Goett: Linking Threads of Experience and Lines of Thought: Everyday Textiles in the Narration of the Self (funded by the AHRC)
Kathleen Manion: "Voices of the Unheard: Perceptions of the success of Interventions with Commercially Sexually Exploited Girls in Three Countries"
Rónán MacDubhghaill, “Cultural memory in the present: narrative, discourse, power’
Noelle McCormack “Words Fail Us: An exploration of the challenges of doing life story work with people who have profound and multiple learning disabilities” (AHRC funded)
Nicola Samson "Narratives of Belonging: Life Histories of Women in East London post Second World War (Funded by the AHRC)"Linda Sandino "Making Concordance: Encounters with Narrative Research and Oral History in the Visual Arts"
Helen Taylor: "The View from Here: Cypriot Refugees and the Meaning of Home in the Metropolitan Context of London"
Anthea Williams: Priests in the Making or Priests Already? The Life Stories of Candidates for Ordination in the Church of England