Ana Caetano is Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte) and Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Research Methods at Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon. She has been developing biographical research to study personal reflexivity, biographical crises and triangulation.Magda Nico is Sociologist, Researcher at the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte), and Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Research Methods at Iscte-University Institute of Lisbon. She is interested in life course theory and methods and longitudinal research.

• Foreword 1. Forever young: creative responses to challenging issues in biographical research Part 1: The Production of Social Theory Through and Beyond the Biography’s Singularity 2. Sociological biography and socialisation process: a dispositionalist-contextualist conception 3. Tapping and assessing the concept of educational regret: methodological techniques for opening up biographical reflection 4. Subjects analysing subjects in the biographical approach: a generational study of Chilean musicians Part 2: Methodological Rivalries, Affairs and Openness 5. Using reflexive lifelines in biographical interviews to aid the collection, visualisation and analysis of resilience 6. Self-administered event history calendars: a possibility for surveys? 7. There is more than one way – a study of mixed analytical methods in biographical narrative research Part 3: Giving the Floor, Sharing Voices, Creating Harmonies 8. Creative biographical responses to epistemological and methodological challenges in generating a deaf life story telling instrument 9. Migrants’ lives matter: biographical research, recognition and social participation 10. Facilitating the voice of disabled women: the biographic narrative interpretive method (BNIM) in action Part 4: The Social Unfolding of Individual Lives 11. Searching for pearls: ‘Doing’ biographical research on Pearl Jephcott 12. A moment of biographical analysis under the microscope: reading Felipe’s autobiographical narrative