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It is now more than twenty years since I first came across biographical research in connection
with my doctoral thesis. It was a time when this approach was beginning to re-establish itself
after half a century, in German sociology in particular but also at the international level.
Sociological biographical research began in the 1920s, in association with the migration study
The Polish Peasant in Europe and America by William Isaac Thomas and Florian Znaniecki
(1918–20; 1958) at the University of Chicago. Even then, empirical work was already concentrating
on the single case study. Alongside documentary analysis on the migration process, this
voluminous work contains only one biography of a Polish migrant, commissioned by the
researchers. It was not so much the concrete biographical analysis that made this work so influential for subsequent interpretative sociology and biographical research, but rather the two authors' general methodological comments.

Biographical research may take a range of forms and may vary in its application and approach but has the unified and coherent aim to give 'voice' to individuals. The central concern of this collection is to assemble articles (from sociology, social psychology, education, health, criminology, social gerontology, epidemiology, management, and organizational research) that illustrate the full range of debates, methods and techniques that can be combined under heading `biographical research'

Abstract
This paper looks at the possibilities of using biographical research in social work focusing on the elderly. Social work with the elderly uses or should use biographical data to create individual plans for clients or for the purpose of sensory activation. Narrative interviews are a form of interaction between a senior client and a social worker. The social worker supports the senior's narrative so they can view their life for themselves and explain its meaning from their own perspective. The use of sensory activation in social work is only possible when the individual's identity is supported by a sufficient amount of environmental stimuli, which can be achieved only by acquiring and analyzing data on the life events of the individual. The paper contains examples of the use of biographical data in social work with the elderly, which is essential for further structuring their lives.

In diesem Artikel geht es um zweierlei: Zum einen wird die Entwicklung eines gemeinsamen Projekts einer Gruppe von Sozialwissenschaftlern rekonstruiert, die ihre spezifischen biographieanalytischen Ansätze und Arbeitsweisen dadurch sichtbar machen, dass sie sich jeweils auf ein bestimmtes autobiographisch-narratives Interview konzentrieren: das Interview mit einer Arbeitsmigrantin aus der Türkei, die in einer deutschen Großstadt lebt. Das Datenmaterial war - unter Leitung der vor einiger Zeit verstorbenen Christa Hoffmann-Riem - im Rahmen eines studentischen Forschungsprojektes erhoben worden. Die Transkription des Interviews ist sowohl in der deutschen Originalversion als auch in englischer Übersetzung zugänglich. Zum anderen wird die Rekonstruktion dieses Projekts in den Kontext einer Forschungstradition gerückt (die mit dem Namen von Fritz Schütze verbunden ist), in der ursprünglich dieser Typ des Interviews - das narrative Interview - entwickelt worden war. Obgleich dieser Interviewtyp heutzutage sehr weit verbreitet ist, erscheint es notwendig, an seine Geschichte zu erinnern, um eine unangebrachte und enge Fokussierung auf 'Methode' oder 'Technik' zu vermeiden. Der Artikel betont die Verbindung von theoretischen und methodologischen Interessen zu Beginn dieser Entwicklung, die Entscheidung, auf methodische Weise Stegreiferzählungen eigener Erlebnisse für soziologische Forschung zu verwenden, und die Hinwendung zur Durchführung und sequentiellen Analyse autobiographisch-narrativer Interviews, die sich als fruchtbar für die Entdeckung von 'Prozessstrukturen' des Lebensablaufs erwies. Daher lieferte diese Forschungstradition einen Beitrag zur Herausbildung und gegenwärtigen Form der sozialwissenschaftlichen Biographieforschung.

Historical and Biographical Research and Archives (by Yulia Yumasheva) presents a short historiographical review of historical and biographical research conducted in Russian and foreign historical science within the three auxiliary historical disciplines: genealogy, prosopography, and historical demography. For the first time in Russian historiography, the implementation experience of such research in the State Archives of the Russian Federation has been reviewed, as well as the largest foreign projects existing in the Internet have been analyzed.