Education prof ignites imagination through fiction-based research

The story begins with a long-lost ancestor named Madeleine Doiron, who lived 11 generations ago on the shores of Île Saint-Jean - present-day Prince Edward Island (PEI) - during the Acadian Expulsion.

The mystery surrounding Doiron's life during the Seven Years' War sparked a deep curiosity in Brock University Professor of Educational Studies Nancy Taber and inspired her recently released debut novel, A Sea of Spectres (Acorn Press).

The book, which follows a modern-day police detective on an other-worldly journey into her family history, is the result of Taber's fiction-based research, a methodology she feels has an important place alongside traditional academia for its ability to bring facts to life.

Taber, a retired military officer who served as a Sea King helicopter air navigator and is now a Co-Director of the Transforming Military Cultures Network, studies how learning, gender and militarism intersect in contexts such as popular culture, museums, universities and militaries, with a particular focus on women's gendered experiences in the Canadian Armed Forces.

She was motivated to combine her research about women's contemporary experiences in militaries with historical ones in Acadia and present them in an imaginative way that is accessible to an audience outside academia. So, she turned to fiction-based research.

Part of the larger genre of arts-based research methodologies, fiction-based research is a form of qualitative research that can take the form of short stories, novellas or novels.

"Fiction-based research is quite relevant as it creatively opens up avenues to engage in a societal critique in a form that people might be more amenable to learning from," she said.

Taber said she was particularly intrigued by fiction-based research as a creative feminist practice and approach to exploring the lives of women.

"I wanted to tell an engaging story that would help readers learn about women's complex agency in times of war, violence and the everyday, and about how they negotiate their family relationships and histories, how they negotiate their work as well as decisions when they are given little choice," she said.

As is true of all fiction writing, Taber said readers of her novel are immersed in the lives of characters, allowing them to learn from the perspectives of the characters and consider how they themselves would react in similar situations.

"I wanted to harness the power of fiction-based research to engage readers' imaginations and encourage people to think differently about themselves and their own place in the world," she said.

Another aspect Taber explored through the writing of her novel was investigating Acadian folklore and legends and how those stories have endured throughout history.

"I'm enthralled with the magic underlying cultural legends, such as the well-known P.E.I. legend of a phantom ship blazing on the horizon, and what people believe to be truth or myth, and how that effects their daily life and the way they perceive the world," Taber said.

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