Family history research, in its many forms, remains one of the most popular pastimes for individuals across the globe. Technological advancements and increased digitalisation have made the past more accessible than ever. It is not uncommon for individuals to travel virtually and physically across temporalities and spaces. With greater accessibility, there is a broader range of cultures, social categories, identities, and narratives, triggering questions of belonging, identity, and purpose. How do individuals negotiate the increasingly varied representations of the past and identity, and how does family history research contribute to this process of knowledge and understanding?

Family history research places the internal self and external impetus in juxtaposition through pedagogical hinges, constructing opportunities for participants to engage in knowledge-in-the-making. This study explicitly emphasises the process of knowledge rather than its product, reflecting the concept of Bildung and engaging a hermeneutic phenomenological perspective. Focusing on Swedish and participant perspectives, I investigate three cases: Swedish family history television series, Allt för Sverige’s previous contestants, results from four genetic ancestry testing companies, and two non-formal family history courses’ participants. Methods include semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, participant observation, and reflexive thematic analysis. The thesis synthesises the results to investigate how experiences depict narratives of the past and identity, how participants engage with these representations and identify pedagogical hinges enabling transitional spaces for knowledge construction.

This presentation focuses on the third study. Results reveal that course participants engage actively with family history research, enriching historical consciousness, empathy, and construction of historical significance. Participants are not a homogenous group and cite various motivations and reactions to their research experiences, from something to do while their husband plays golf or when it is cold outside to searching for an adoptee’s biological family. Assessment of the participants’ negotiations with narratives reveals multiple pedagogical hinges and exposes the permeable and dynamic edges of traditional boundaries and binaries such as self/other and private/public. Moreover, the results emphasise that the significance of family history research for participants is found equally in the everyday banal and effervescent.