ABSTRACT This article investigates the intercultural and pedagogical challenges related to the reception and inclusion of unaccompanied foreign minors in Italy, with particular attention to residential educational care facilities located in Northern Italy. Through a qualitative study grounded in constructivist Grounded Theory, conducted by means of interviews, document analysis, and collective biography writing, the research highlights the mechanisms that hinder the translation of formally recognised rights into actual educational, social, and work opportunities. Three key interpretative axes emerge: administrative violence, understood as bureaucratic delays and fragmentations that produce invisibility and precariousness; the rhetoric of child-centeredness, which reduces the pedagogical function to mere protection, preventing graduated pathways towards responsibility; and vulnerability, considered not as an individual trait but as a relational condition involving both minors and the educational services themselves, often lacking adequate tools. The findings show how the failure to correct long-standing and well-known critical issues generates a vicious circle of exclusion and exploitation, fuelling processes of marginalisation. The article proposes strategies for improvement at institutional, educational, and community levels, emphasising the need to strengthen local networks, ensure reliable timelines for documentation, promote intercultural training, and recognise both sport and work as fundamental channels of inclusion and active citizenship.

The article presents “imagined conversations” as a method of narrative research presentation of a slow change in an institutional context, developed while researching academic censorship and publishing in the state-socialist Czech Republic and Hungary. The aim was, first, to capture the gradual transformation of institutions, the people in them, and the textual work they produced under politically restrictive conditions. Second, it was to allow the interviewees, researchers active in state academic institutions between 1969 and 1989, maximum space to represent themselves, while at the same time preserve the polyphony and contradictions present in the interviews due to the politically, emotionally, and ethically sensitive nature of the topic. The dramatized dialogues, created with the application of constructivist grounded theory and narratology, are “imagined” in the sense of being constructed from one-to-one interviews and that the resulting collective biography foregrounded the sense of a shared community (cf. Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities”).

LGBTQ+ life stories have been historically silenced, marginalized, and hidden. This paper uses the example of queer collective biographies – illustrated collections of short biographies of LGBTQ+ people from across the world, past and present, and the famous and the everyday – to draw attention to how LGBTQ+ life stories are told. Using a combination of textual and visual analysis and semi-structured interviews with creators, circulators, and readers, this paper attends to how genre-specific conventions of collective biography, celebratory narratives, and the labels of heroes and icons, perpetuate homonormative ideals of visibility, productivity, and respectability. In doing so, the queer collective biographies convey implicit messages of validity, acceptability, and responsibility for LGBTQ+ communities, and therefore undermines their radical queer potential.

Resumo Neste artigo, a minha intenção é de mostrar o quanto a nova coleção “Brasileiras”, da editora Rosa dos Tempos e organizada por Josélia Aguiar, é, ao mesmo tempo, desbravadora e premente. A coleção, apresentando retratos de ilustres brasileiras, tem sido curada com o maior cuidado em relação à escolha da autora, e cada volume tem um estilo diferente. Faço uma leitura dos três primeiros livros publicados da coleção, realçando o compromisso com uma prática feminista de biografia.

This paper investigates the ways in which bilingual and bicultural mothers experience motherhood and formal schooling of their children while also navigating doctoral programs. Mothering is both heavy work and a potential place of power (Lockman, 2019). Leveraging the lived experiences and aspirations of (other)mothers for their children has a strong, lasting impact on how children see their potential futures (Matos, 2019). Understanding and emphasizing epistemologies of the home (Garcia & Delgado Bernal, 2021) is, therefore, a meaningful place to begin discussion about goals and trajectories for mothers and their children. This paper reports findings from the first four plática sessions, each emphasizing aspects of Cultural Capital (Yosso, 2005) with mothers currently enrolled in doctoral programs with school-age children. Mothers and Othermothers (Collins, 2000) came together over Zoom from two universities to discuss their aspirations, successes, and challenges in navigating doctoral programs while supporting their children. Through the use of pláticas and collective biography methods, this study amplifies the voices of women caregivers and their experiences, asking the following questions to understand individual experiences and needs of culturally and linguistically diverse m(o)thers also navigating higher education.

This article presents the first attempt at a prosopographical analysis of the medical staff of the Aleksan-drovskaya Provincial Zemstvo Hospital in Perm from 1870 to 1914. It draws on the author’s database, created through a frontal study of specialized zemstvo periodicals, office records, and archival materials. This article systematizes information on key indicators of the lives and activities of all 36 full-time physicians at the Ale-ksandrovskaya Hospital in Perm. The study identified five conventional groups of these specialists who served there during the zemstvo period (the last since 1914). The author analyzed several common characteristics in their collective biographies: significant average length of service, a high concentration of physicians with clini-cal training and a doctorate in medicine, and a small percentage of women. At the same time, significant dif-ferences were also found across all the groups examined, among which the uniqueness of the second group based on ethnicity stands out.

We, five co-authors of this paper, came together for a three-day collective biography workshop to reflect on moments of recognition that have impacted our lives. We told our stories from lives lived with disability; we listened to each other’s stories and wrote and read them to each other with careful attention. In the discussions that followed, both during the workshop and during the following months of finalizing this paper, we explored the ways in which disability is made to matter and how. In that process, we each moved beyond our own singularity, our own particular memories of recognition and belonging, to a new, emergent understanding of our shared materiality and response-ability.

Fate of Ukrainian scholars in the humanities during the first decades of Bolshevik totalitarian regime: Methodological problems of creating a collective biography

<span lang="EN-US">This study examines the contributions of pioneering women in Peruvian accounting, both in scientific research and university teaching, in a historically male-dominated field. The research aims to highlight their academic impact and professional legacy. A qualitative approach was employed, utilizing the collective biography method and a phenomenological perspective. The study analyzed historical undergraduate and graduate theses from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM) and conducted interviews with five distinguished female accounting professors. The findings reveal that these women made significant contributions in key areas such as financial auditing, management accounting, and environmental auditing, demonstrating adaptability and ethical commitment. In the educational sphere, participants emphasized their transformative teaching experiences, dedication to students, and the challenges posed by technology and social changes. The study concludes that these pioneers not only shaped the evolution of accounting education but also left a lasting legacy of academic and social engagement. The research underscores the need for gender equity policies and continuous technological adaptation in accounting education. These findings have practical implications for promoting diversity in academia and ensuring inclusive participation in the professional development of future generations.</span>

Despite the large number of works devoted to the biography of the great Russian architect, painter and thinker Vasily Ivanovich Bazhenov (1738–1799), the personal history of his descendants has been little studied. Meanwhile, they were landowners of Arzamassky Uyezd of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, in which Emperor Paul I in 1796 granted the architect the villages of Kardavil (also Nikolskoye), Korino and Ponetayevka. Many pages of the history of the Bazhenov family, nobles of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, remain unknown to the general public. One of them is the murder of Olga Alexandrovna Bazhenova (1820–1855), nee Strunina and the wife of Major Vasily Vsevolodovich Bazhenov (1803–1846), the grandson of the famous architect. Personal history (history in biographies) is one of the most relevant areas in modern historical science, which is currently experiencing a "cultural turn", during which there is a shift from macrohistory to microhistory. Historians conducting research in line with the resurgent biographical method focus on the destiny of individual people, whose reconstructed personal histories are necessary to recreate the events of the past and understand the studied historical epoch. This study involves a wide range of sources and also uses such methods of historical research as historical-genetic, historical-comparative, historical-systemic, etc., cross-analysis (cross-checking of several sources). Biographical method and auxiliary historical disciplines (for example, genealogy) are also widely used. Thus, the article attempts to reconstruct O. A. Bazhenova's personal history in the context of the historical epoch in which the landowner lived, presenting a variety of previously unknown information from the family history of the outstanding architect, found during long and painstaking research in archives of Nizhny Novgorod, Arzamas, Saint Petersburg, Moscow and etc. In addition, the article provides reconstructions of the biographies of some of the Bazhenovs' entourage, which significantly expands the context of the study and illustrates the use of prosopography (creation of collective biographies): not only the biographies of key figures are reconstructed, but also their surroundings, revealing the extensive social ties of the Bazhenov family.

In the wake of post-truth politics, neo-oral media, and epistemic fragmentation, qualitative researchers face intensified pressure to justify the legitimacy of our methods. This essay explores the idea that writing itself can be a form of research—not merely an act of representation, but an epistemic, institutional, and affective method. Structured in two voices—one stylized and poetic, the other scholarly and conceptual—the piece moves through five acts to examine writing as a form of border-crossing. It argues that voice-rich, situated writing is not indulgent; it is a way of thinking, navigating complexity, and holding space for uncertainty. Drawing on traditions of performative autoethnography, collective biography, data feminism, and more-than-human inquiry, the essay considers how writing can generate insight, foster civic resonance, and resist epistemic conformity. A heuristic table offers readers practical entry points for approaching writing as method. This essay is for those moments when something in the sentence feels off, but we write it anyway. It asks what becomes possible when we write not to comply, but to inquire.

Abstract Medieval ladies-in-waiting were sophisticated players who earned significant rewards and engaged in power politics. This article quantifies and visualizes how female attendants accessed royal power and influence during the reign of Elizabeth of York (d. 1503), consort of Henry VII (r. 1485–1509). Using prosopographical techniques to build a collective biography of Elizabeth's highborn servants, analyzed with three related Microsoft Access databases, the investigation uncovered over 350 references to their activities. Employing Net.Create software and techniques of network analysis, this study contextualizes both their duties and their rewards. Visually representing proximity to the monarch reveals, beyond anecdotes, how rulers relied upon some ladies-in-waiting more than others. Informed by gender studies, this article supports recent queen-focused analyses of female power that have sought to challenge the long-standing narrative that male-dominated monarchy excluded female participation and access to power by revealing the prominence and activities of female courtiers in late medieval England.

ABSTRACT Despite operating in unpredictable times and rhetoric to the contrary, universities make it hard for academics to pursue transformative agendas, meaningful community engagement, and activism to inform social and policy changes. This disjuncture is acute for academics working in fraught areas, such as forced migration. The frailty of higher education, caused by decades of neoliberal governance, increasingly restricts what ‘counts’ as academic service to activities that ultimately preserve the status quo, rendering activism invisible and unvalued. Misalignments therefore exist with what counts as academic work which create risks in the forms of critique, misrecognition and exploitation for both scholars and their students. Drawing on a collective biography with academics from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the UK involved in refugee-focused social movements, we explore academic activism against a backdrop of hegemonic assumptions about what academic service is and can be. We also consider what this means for academic work, and the implications for collectivising for change, both in and beyond the classroom. We argue for institutions to better value the kinds of academic service that amplify diverse perspectives, voices, and knowledges, and help us to navigate uncertainty.

Abstract On the basis of a new dataset of top wealth holdings at the taxpayer level for the Swiss canton of Zurich from 1880 to 1952, this article makes two main contributions. First, we provide an estimate of the top 0.1 per cent wealth share and show that wealth concentration in Zurich exhibited significant stability in comparative perspective. Second, we provide a collective portrait of the top 0.1 per cent wealth share, highlighting patterns of continuity and change. If inheritance played a paramount role, genuine ‘rentiers’ remained a minority in comparison with businessmen active in family firms which they had inherited. We also identify a significant share of wealthy women. By combining biographical and genealogical information, we analyse the persistence of top fortunes. In 1952, 35 per cent of the top 0.1 per cent wealth was owned by taxpayers who were related – kinship‐wise – to the richest taxpayers of the late nineteenth century. Overall, we highlight how collective biography approaches can contribute to debates on wealth concentration and transmission. As top wealth tends to be concentrated in specific locations, we also underscore how studies focusing on specific cities and regions can improve our understanding of these mechanisms.

The article is a continuation of the research by the authors of the officer corps of the Russian army using information technology to create a collective portrait of the socio-professional identity of the officers of the Imperial Nikolaev Military Academy, the Nikolaev Engineering Academy, and the Mikhail Artillery Academy of the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I. The sources of the research included documents from the military department published online on the website of the Russian Military Historical Archive, presented in seniority lists of specific educational institutions at the beginning of 1914, seniority lists categorized by ranks, as well as historical reference internet resources on the historical issues. To form a collective portrait of the officers in our sample, the task was to identify the common and particular traits characteristic of the representatives of this group. In addition to measuring the socio-professional parameters of a specific group of officers in 1914, elements of the prosopographic method were employed, analyzing the indicators from previous stages of collective biographies of the studied group (origin, place of birth, education, combat experience, and the number of awards received during previous service). Based on the studied materials, a table was created using Microsoft Excel that reflected the main aspects of the socio-professional parameters of the officer corps of that time. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the application of a comprehensive approach to studying the main characteristics of the officers who served in the academies. As a result of the conducted analysis, 13 tables were constructed with data groupings on age, social and religious status, place of birth or registration, levels of general and military education, presence of combat experience, number of earned awards, ranks according to length of service, and positions held in the academies. The socio-professional image of the instructors and other officers of the military academies is examined in comparison with other groups of the officer corps, determining the specificity of this group in relation to the broader officer ranks. The article sets out the tasks of studying the career paths of the academy officers and the fates of officer families in the military-revolutionary era of 1914-1922. The authors specifically explain their desire to create a large database for studying the dynamics of biographies of different groups of officers, i.e., a prosopographic informational resource.

ABSTRACT In the landscape of a multicultural society, this paper explores the absence of diversity in Australian Health and Physical Education Teacher Education (HPETE): a prevailing White profession. This study delves into the complex and non-linear narratives of silenced voices, shedding light on the urgent need to investigate the experiences of non-White (female) HPETE scholars with English as an additional language. The paper aims to explore the intersections of ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality and language of three South American women who live in Australia and work in HPETE (us). Inspired by decolonial and Southern theories, we want to introduce knowledge that was created in the Global South and, therefore, we use the work of Freire [(1987). Pedagogia Do Oprimido [Pedagogy of the oppressed] (17th ed). Paz e Terra.] as a theoretical framework mainly with his concepts of praxis and conscientização [critical consciousness], together with critical intersectional feminism. We also utilised a Freirean-inspired method for data generation (‘pedagogical letters’), and feminist-originated collective biographies. Findings reveal our struggles to survive colour-blindness Australian HPETE, particularly to being labelled as ‘exotic’, how our South American physical education knowledge is not often valued in our workplaces, and the struggles with the neoliberal university system. In our final letter addressed to other non-White female HPETE scholars, or las hermanas, we underscore the importance of amplifying our voices, fostering dialogue and collectively challenging the existing structures that perpetuate exclusionary practices within HPETE. Our hope with this paper is to inspire a transformative shift towards inclusivity and recognition of diverse voices within HPETE, fostering a more equitable and reflective HPETE space.

Abstract Albinism is a relatively rare, non-contagious, genetically inherited condition still permeated by discrimination and stigmatization today. This research aimed to present the life experiences of people with albinism and their relationship with the condition, using their trajectories and narratives under a collective biography. Qualitative research was conducted using Merton’s focused interview techniques and snowball sampling method. The collective biography was built to show the group’s trajectory and experiences through an intertwined narrative of the participants’ statements. These people’s experiences were addressed in the dimensions of birth and family; adolescence and the school universe; the world of work and professional trajectory; healthcare and strategies for overcoming their condition. Throughout this group’s trajectory, prejudice and stigmatization are experiences lived from the moment of birth and continue throughout life. We conclude that the lack of information perpetuates stigmas around the condition and prevents these people from accessing accurate diagnoses and necessary care. This situation emphasizes the urgency of implementing public policies that address this group’s needs.

The article analyzes the role of such literary genre as collective biography in the formation of the Early Modern English historical memory. It concentrates on John Leland’s biobibliographical De viris illustribus, which in form and semantic content most fully corresponds to Johannes Trithemius’ Catalogus illustrium virorum Germaniae. Despite the fact that by the end of his life Leland had not completed his work, he left behind a text that represents an Early Modern intellectual trend aimed at the invention of “national” historical and cultural traditions of the European peoples by classically trained scholars. Collecting within the framework of one text not only English, but also Welsh and ancient Britons, Leland developed a narrative that was designed to link the origins of English nationhood with the legendary British monarchy of Brutus of Troy, legitimize Henry VIII’s ecclesiastical policy, as well as to proclaim before an educated European audience the antiquity, richness and depth of the national culture of England.

Contemporary biography for children is best understood not as a recent innovation, but as the intensified reworking of long-standing structural tensions that have shaped life-writing for young readers across time. Over the past two decades, the genre has become one of the most expansive and visible sectors of children’s publishing, particularly through the proliferation of collective biographies and works devoted to women and girls. While recent scholarship has begun to address this phenomenon, it has often privileged the study of contemporary trends without fully accounting for the historical constraints that continue to organise biographical form, authority, and reader address. Situating current developments within a long-term perspective, the article traces the persistence of exemplarity, seriality, visual recognisability and pedagogical address as structuring conditions inherited from secular collective biography and religious life writing. These enduring constraints, rather than limiting innovation, actively shape how contemporary biographies for children select, condense, and render lives meaningful and legible for young readers. Against this historical background, the article reconsiders early twentieth-century debates on biography—concerning truth and art, hybridity, compression, interiority, authority, and aesthetic construction—as conceptual resources whose relevance for biography for children becomes fully visible only in retrospect. Through the analysis of contemporary picturebook biographies and collective formats, it shows how such long-standing biographical issues are redistributed across verbal, visual, and material layers. In this context, hybridity operates as a regulated compositional strategy rather than as evidence of conflict between fact and fiction; compression functions as a form of cognitive and design scaffolding; interiority is externalised and staged in relational terms, and aesthetic work is frequently relocated from prose style to iconotextual and material organisation.The article concludes by positioning biography for children as a distinct and theoretically productive field, in which literary, visual, ethical, and pedagogical regimes intersect under specific constraints. Rather than solving these tensions, contemporary biography for children renders them newly visible, making the genre a privileged site for examining how specific lives are shaped, authorised, and made meaningful for future-oriented readers.

Resumo O albinismo é uma condição relativamente rara, não contagiosa, herdada geneticamente e ainda hoje permeada por discriminação e estigmatização. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi apresentar as experiências de vida das pessoas com albinismo e sua relação com a enfermidade, utilizando suas trajetórias e narrativas, na forma de biografia coletiva. Realizou-se uma pesquisa qualitativa, com as técnicas de entrevista focada de Merton e amostragem pelo método bola de neve. A biografia coletiva do grupo foi construída de modo a trasladar a trajetória e experiências do grupo, por meio de uma narrativa entrelaçada das falas dos participantes. Foram abordadas as experiências dessas pessoas nas dimensões nascimento e família; adolescência e o universo escolar; o mundo do trabalho e a jornada profissional; o cuidado em saúde e as estratégias de superação da própria condição. Ao longo da trajetória desse grupo, o preconceito e a estigmatização são experiências vivenciadas desde o momento do nascimento e se prolongam por toda a vida. Conclui-se que a falta de informações não só perpetua estigmas em torno da condição, mas também impede que essas pessoas tenham acesso a diagnósticos precisos e aos cuidados necessários. Isso ressalta a urgência de implementar políticas públicas que abordem as necessidades desse grupo.