Their Story, My Words: narrativising family history ethically and authentically

This thesis responds to the question “How can family history be represented and narrativised ethically and authentically? This thesis combines the fields of autoethnography and family history to produce both a self-reflexive Exegesis and a Creative Praxis, focussing on my grandparents’ history as White Russians before, during and after the Russian Revolution, and discusses the ethical and authentic representation of historical events through personal narratives. The impetus for this thesis was the growing worldwide interest in family history research, and the subsequent use by family historians, of primary sources and family stories to write the lives of ancestors.

The Exegesis explores life-writing and the narrativisation of family history, within the overarching themes of ethics and authenticity. It is an autoethnographic study, which researches the ethics of life writing, the principles of representing the past authentically, and the authenticity of historical representation. The Creative Praxis examines the lives of my grandparents, by studying and integrating documents from my grandparents, together with historical research of the period before, during and after the Russian Revolution and Civil War. It is a creative work which uses the research of the exegesis to ethically and authentically represent and narrativise this part of my grandparent’s history.