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The Global History Lab’s half-day event introduces the Narrative Observatories in action. Grounded in bottom-up, globally scaled social science (BUGSSS), the Observatories bring researchers together to document, analyse, and compare narratives from diverse contexts, making visible how storytelling influences social cohesion, public memory, and political life.

The event will showcase ongoing research while also inviting participants to take part in a live, interactive Observatory session. In doing so, the event demonstrates narrative as both a form of knowledge and a research method: a way of understanding fracture, and a way of building connection across difference.

The first part of the programme features short presentations from convenors and current Observers. Prof. Jeremy Adelman, founder of the Global History Lab, will situate the Observatory model within broader debates on story, society, and knowledge production. Dr Rick Lechowick, co-designer of the Observatories programme, will introduce the Narrative Observatories framework and reflect on its development and evolution to date.  This will be followed by case studies from two current Observers collecting narratives in their home countries.

The second half of the event is participatory. Guided by the convenors, participants will engage in a facilitated exercise that mirrors the opening phase of a Narrative Observatory by collectively identifying emergent narratives shaping contemporary social life.

By combining presentation with practice, the event embodies CRASSH’s 25th-anniversary theme, Knowledge in a Fractured World, and invites participants to join a shared experiment in understanding how stories fracture, connect, and remake the worlds we inhabit.