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There has been an increase in the number of individuals who do not have children for various reasons, whether health, choice or circumstance, as well as those who have children later in the life course. Concurrently, there is a moral panic surrounding the decreasing birth rate. A thematic analysis of posts on the parenting forum Mumsnet explores the significance of childless/freeness, in the context of wider relationships. We find that established categories of ‘mother’ and ‘childless/free’ are reductive, and are more porous than usually framed. We consider the impact of such categories on women's friendships, finding that they undermine potential solidarities. Drawing on Scott (2019), we conceptualise the absence of children as significant, but not necessarily a deficit, highlighting the potential to understand childless/freeness in the everyday.

In this thesis I critically and creatively explore the potential for first-person writing that, rather than being limited to its subject position, is capable of expansiveness, or a movement beyond its apparent position. Beginning as a study of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931), the thesis brings Woolf’s work into conversation with Roland Barthes’ lectures on haiku in The Preparation of the Novel (2011) and Brian Dillon’s Essayism (2017). I will show how The Waves might be read as essayistic, broadly, in that it is speculative, contains partial accounts, highlights contingent experience, and privileges uncertainty. More specifically, The Waves can be read as essayistic in that Woolf’s use of ‘I’ is – like the ‘I’ of her essays – a mixture of personal and impersonal, capable of a situatedness, and a movement beyond. The thesis combines theoretical discussion with close readings of fragments from The Waves. Through the thesis I relate the notion of a first-person moving beyond self to my interest in the role of impersonality in artistic creation. I argue that in the artistic process, one must inhabit that paradoxical position Woolf calls for in an essay-writer, ‘never to be yourself and yet always’. The journey towards the art of creation begins from the personal, but necessarily involves an openness to uncertainty. Following the critical component of this thesis is a novel in which I write in the first-person with a capacity for expansiveness, or movement towards the impersonal.

Drawing on narrative interviews from a study exploring the perceptions and experiences of children and young people who have a parent with young onset dementia, this article explores the ways in which the condition impacted their life courses. Dementia is degenerative, terminal and has an unpredictable timeframe that affected young people’s time perspectives, life planning and the ways they conceptualized their lives. This article contributes to the literature around young people’s life courses by illustrating how the concept of liminality can inform understandings of the impact of parental illness on the life course. Using a constructionist perspective we explore the impact of parental dementia on life planning in relation to education/career, mobilities and personal lives. For some, the future was a source of deep anxiety, whilst others were preoccupied with the present and unable to contemplate life beyond their parents’ illness. On the whole, participants felt their lives were in ‘limbo’ until their parents’ death. The data indicate that nuanced approaches towards the life course are required in order to better understand ‘being in limbo’ and to inform support.

Drawing on narrative interviews from a study exploring the perceptions and experiences of children and young people who have a parent with young onset dementia, this article explores the ways in which the condition impacted their life courses. Dementia is degenerative, terminal and has an unpredictable timeframe that affected young people’s time perspectives, life planning and the ways they conceptualized their lives. This article contributes to the literature around young people’s life courses by illustrating how the concept of liminality can inform understandings of the impact of parental illness on the life course. Using a constructionist perspective we explore the impact of parental dementia on life planning in relation to education/career, mobilities and personal lives. For some, the future was a source of deep anxiety, whilst others were preoccupied with the present and unable to contemplate life beyond their parents’ illness. On the whole, participants felt their lives were in ‘limbo’ until their parents’ death. The data indicate that nuanced approaches towards the life course are required in order to better understand ‘being in limbo’ and to inform support.

Families are pivotal in terms of facilitating children’s language development, including their ability to read. However, to date, there is little research designed to understand how shared reading operates within the realm of everyday family practices. Drawing on data from a study which set out to explore shared reading practices in the home, this article considers reading within the context of the family and everyday family life. In-depth interviews were carried out with 29 parents of pre-school children to investigate shared reading practices within a socially and culturally mixed sample. This study revealed that the relationship between shared reading practices and family practices is recursive. In particular, building on the seminal work of Finch reading was seen to be a specific feature of family practice and routine, and acts as a form of family display. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how shared reading contributes toward the ways in which structure and agency may operate in a family setting. Constructing reading as a family practice and a form of display makes an important contribution to understandings of home literacy practices and behaviors. This article concludes that endeavors to engage families with shared reading therefore require a comprehensive understanding of family life and family practices and the role of shared reading within.

It is well established that having a parent with any illness or disability can have an adverse effect onindividuals’ experiences of education and on their educational progress. Advances in medicalknowledge are leading to more people under 65 being diagnosed with young onset dementias and,concomitantly, to more children and young people who are in education having a parent with thisdiagnosis. Hardly any research has asked these young people directly about their experiences, butthe limited evidence suggests that there will likely be significant emotional, mental and psychologi-cal damage with enduring impact on their lives. This article, drawing on findings from a unique nar-rative, auto/biographical study involving 24 British 6 to 31-year-olds, focuses on the consequencesof parental young onset dementia for educational careers. These dementias are untimely progressiveterminal illnesses with unpredictable trajectories and timelines, throughout the course of whichphysical, cognitive and emotional functions and abilities are inexorably lost. Participants’ experi-ences show that living with a parent with young onset dementia, whilst negotiating the educationsystem, can be extremely hard. Difficulties are exacerbated by the condition’s distinctive character-istics, the current lack of any cure and anticipatory, pre-death grief. Lack of public awareness andunderstanding, both of young onset dementias and of dedicated resources and support services, alsoresult in many feeling isolated and ignored. We make suggestions for positive provision and actionsthat educational institutions can make to begin to meet the particular needs of these young people.

This symposium considers how the digital humanities (DH), which relies on computer technology to interpret data and present conclusions, can enhance our understanding of tourism history. It begins with an introduction that defines DH, considers how DH can assist the way in which we think about tourism, and discusses the strengths and limitations of applications like text mining and digital mapping. This is followed by a review of the scholarship on digital mapping and the humanities which also highlights some of the important themes and projects that have sprung from this dynamic interdisciplinary dialogue. The latter half of the symposium is dedicated to two project reports. The first describes how the Grand Tour Project at Stanford University is utilizing a database of digital entries which combine digitised text and structured data to illuminate connections between eighteenth-century travellers. The second discusses how the Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities project at Lancaster University is using geo-spatial technologies to examine the relationship between historically evolving ideas about tourist destinations in the Lake District and the contemporary management of such sites. The symposium concludes with some contemplation of the future developments in the realm of digital humanities and tourism history.