Francesca Balestra
I’m Francesca Balestra, 2nd year PhD student in Psychology at the University of Parma, Italy.
My research project is focused on “negotiating selves and identities in psychotherapeutic conversations” from a dialogical and constructionist point of view. My theoretical and methodological framework is thus very close to bakthinian approach, in particular with concepts like polyphony, heteroglossia and Ego-Alter relation. Moreover, my colleague Consuelo Mameli and I , as members of CAVI research group (Centre for Video Analysis of Interaction, http://www.cavi.unipr.it/ ) at the University of Parma, are working on a project which aims at developing a set of methods, based on video recorded data, that would allow us to investigate in a complex way discursive dynamics of co-construction of knowledge in different contexts, like school and family therapy. The connection between key theoretical and epistemological concepts and methodologies is of crucial importance to me.
Iscar summer school covers both these aspects, since, unlike most of Italian summer schools, it offers not only methodologies training, but also a reflection on conceptual frameworks .
For these reasons, I think that this summer school could be a great opportunity to improve my theoretical knowledge about dialogism and cultural-historical theory and my methodological skills and that it could be also very useful for the CAVI research group. In particular, my expectation from the summer school is to have the opportunity to ask and receive feedback from expert researcher, to exchange ideas about my research project with doctoral students from other universities and to elaborate new ways for managing theory and doing research.