The Laboratory of Narrative Research (LNR) is a teaching and research unit that is part of the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. It has been designed to bring together scholars and researchers from across the humanities, the social sciences and other scientific fields who have a special interest in the workings and the politics of narrative production.

It is premised on the belief that stories pervade culture, the media and everyday communication. They structure and give direction to our thinking, our responses to others, our affective investments, our actions and decision-making. As such they reproduce what is accepted and familiar but are also at once in a position to take us beyond what we normally see or know. The Laboratory of Narrative Research is committed to investigating the ability of narrative to be in dialogue with the world and at once cut across borders of difference (disciplinary, generic, communicational, social, cultural) into fields of uncharted thought, experience and practice.

While promoting interdisciplinarity, the Laboratory also hopes to encourage the creation of contact zones between the academic community and wider social networks. It aims both to use its expertise in language and narrative analysis in its encounters with other fields of learning and to make its research findings public and accessible to a wider community of learners outside the university walls (by offering public seminars and distant-learning courses).

Our objectives

  • To promote crossdisciplinary collaboration in narrative research and practice
  • To study the mobility of narrative and its ability to cut across borders of difference
  • To develop local, national and international partnerships
  • To establish contact zones with a non-academic public
  • To support undergraduate and postgraduate work related to narrative production in a variety of fields
  • To lend visibility to the narrative-related work carried out in humanities departments

To realize its objectives, the Laboratory aims to

  • organize an annual symposium on an aspect of narrative
  • organize seminars and workshops on narrative theory or practice for university students and primary and secondary-education pupils
  • offer on-line classes to university students and the wider public (with accreditation)
  • make our research findings public in an open-access, interdisciplinary on-line journal

LNR establishment

Read the laboratory establishment in the Goverment Gazette (in Greek / ΦΕΚ Ίδρυσης)