The website of Narrative Matters 2018 is no longer maintained

Thank you for you interest in Narrative Matters 2018: The ABCs of Narritive. We look back on a successful edition of the conference, which was held 2-5 July, 2018, in Enschede (the Netherlands). We leave this site online for the foreseeable future, but we will no longer maintain this website. For the program and book of abstracts of the conference of Narrative Matters 2018, please see this page.

Upcoming: Narrative Matters 2020

In 2020, the next edition of Narrative Matters will be hosted in Atlanta (USA). The 2020 edition will be centered around the topic of Narrative and Social and Personal Transformation. For more information, see the website of Narrative Matters 2020.

About the Narrative Matters conference

Narrative Matters is a bi-annual conference on the study of narrative, which brings together scholars from different disciplines. The current booming interest for narrative or “story-telling” across academic disciplines and professional fields comes with a number of challenges. One of these challenges, as captured by the conference theme “the ABCs of narrative”, is the need for a better understanding and an interdisciplinary dialogue between A) the arts and humanities; B) the natural and computer sciences; C) the behavioral, social, and health sciences. A thorough interdisciplinary exchange can enrich our understanding of the cognitive, affective, motivational, social, political, ideological, or ethical workings of narrative, and provide insights from which also diverse professional uses of narrative can benefit. A second challenge is that of learning about exciting new developments in technological expression and computational analysis of narrative that might be productive both for researchers and professionals. A third challenge the “ABCs of narrative” aims to address is the need to stimulate “critical narrative savviness” among citizens, in particular in the many professional practices in which narrative or story-telling play a central role. A keen critical acumen and sense of responsibility are needed, in our days as much as ever in the past, to detect and resist unwanted effects of narrative world-making and persuasion.



We identified a number of topics for the 2018 edition that address these three challenges and seem relevant for a fruitful understanding and improved uses of narrative across disciplines and professions.