In this volume academic and researchers from across disciplines including education, psychology and health studies come together to discuss personal, political and professional narratives of struggle, resilience and hope. Contributors draw from a rich body of auto-biographical research examining the role of narrative and how it can be constructed, considering the roles of significant others, inspirational, educational and fiction characters, as well as myth and legend, to compose a life story.

Hazel Reid is Reader in Career Guidance and Counselling, and Director of the Centre for Career and Personal Development at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK.

Linden West is Professor and Director of Research Development in the Faculty of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, and Visiting Professor at Paris West University Nanterre, France.

1. Narratives of Change and Continuity: Their Transdisciplinary and Subversive Potential Linden West and Hazel Reid 2. Auto/Biography: A Relational Journey Laura Formenti 3. 'Moments of Being' and the Search for Meaning: Epistemological and Methodological Challenges for the Autoethnographic Researcher Wilma Fraser 4. 'A Very Elementary Transformation of One's Existence': Narrating Moments of Political Change Molly Andrews 5. Learning Democracy and Fundamentalism: Narratives of Change, Recognition and Disrespect Linden West 6. Whose Story? Whose Memory? Multiple Readings of Oral-History Life Accounts from the Socialist Era Martin Hájek 7. Identity Formation and Re-Formation within Christian Fundamentalism: Journeys of Faith - Interrupted Josie McSkimming 8. Stories of Resistance and Resilience: Journeys to Engagement with the UK Global Justice Movement James Trewby 9. Family Beliefs and Practices around Academic Ability and Social Mobility: Narratives of Contradiction, Continuity, and Resistance Laura Mazzoli Smith 10. How Do Career Guidance Practitioners Talk about their Class, Gender and Racialised Identities? Janice Smith 11. What is Career about if Not Biography? Examining the 'Shift' to Constructivist and Interdisciplinary Approaches in Career Counselling Hazel Reid 12. Poetry Written from the Words of People Given a Diagnosis of Dementia: A Narrative Analysis Maria Castro and Kitty Clark-McGhee 13. 'Those Letters Keep Me Going': Epistolary Spaces and Resilience Building Processes in US Soldiers to Sweet Heart War Correspondence, 1942-1945 Anne Byrne and Tanja Kovacic