The long and established roots of biographical research have been documented throughout the years in a rich body of reflections directed at the main trends and traditions of its evolution within social sciences. However, many of the texts mapping its key approaches and methods tend to be exclusively qualitatively driven, cross-disciplinary, and focused on particular approaches and national traditions, zooming in the context of specific research designs or issues. In this presentation we aim to contribute to this mapping of biographical research by narrowing down the disciplinary focus to sociology and the scope to the European academic context, while simultaneously broadening the analytical approach to include both a qualitative and quantitative outlook on the field. The main results of a bibliometric analysis and literature review are discussed, taking into consideration elements such as year and type of publication, geographical scope, type of concepts used, main focus (theoretical, methodological, mixed), methodology, type of approach, use of content analysis software, among others. With these approaches (content and statistical analysis) we are able to identify and characterise the major trends, debates and stages in the development of biographical research in the European sociological literature. This analysis is part of a research project entitled “Biographical echoes: triangulation in the study of life histories” whose main goal is to reconstitute a person’s life history by means of autobiographical accounts, but also using the testimonies that significant others (family, friends) share about that biography.

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Biographical research