The Potential and Pitfalls of Lived Experience - Theoretical & Practical Reflections

1 Apr 2025

ISS21 was delighted to host a one-day symposium with invited keynote speakers and round table discussions with colleagues from UCC. 

Symposium Theme

‘Lived experience’ has become a key concept in academia and public discourse, often used to highlight positionality, marginality, and personal knowledge in understanding social issues such as poverty, migration, crime, and inequality. However, questions remain about how it should be conceptualized and what kind of knowledge it produces. This symposium critically examines these questions from various disciplinary perspectives, drawing on feminist, sociological, criminological, and political insights.

Presenters & Papers

Keynotes

• Experiential Knowledge in Dialogue With Academic Knowledge: What Can Be Learned? Prof. Jenny Pearce, University of Bedfordshire, UK 
• What Does It Mean to Live an Experience? Prof. Sharon Wright, University of Glasgow, UK

Round Table Discussion 1

• Dr. Julius-Cezar MacQuarie (Sociology & Criminology, UCC) – Lived Experiences through Structural Invisibility and Precarity Faced by Nightworkers
• Dr. Aoife Price & Dr. Calvin Swords (Applied Social Studies, UCC) – Making sense of ‘lived experience’ involvement in current mental health systems: shared lessons, learnings, and pitfalls from researchers in mental health and disability.
• Dr. Lydia Sapouna (Applied Social Studies, UCC) – Learning from the lived experience of Madness and distress – towards epistemic justice? (School of Applied Social Studies, UCC)
• Dr Amin Sharifi Isaloo (Sociology & Criminology, UCC) - Fear and uncertainty in Direct Provision

Round Table Discussion 2 

• Dr. Tom Boland (Sociology & Criminology, UCC) – The Lived Experience of Being Right: Interviewing Critics
• Dr. Gema Kloppe-Santamaría (Sociology & Criminology, UCC) – Lived Religion: Examining the Lived Experience of Some Faithful but Not Others? 
• Dr. Ray Griffin (South East Technological University) – Social Policy Kills: Or, How Lived Experience Fights Statistical Flattening – And Loses
• Jody Moore-Ponce (PhD Researcher, Sociology and Criminology, UCC) – Speaking Your Truth: Lived Experience, Values, and the Question of Legitimacy

Find out more at: Lived Experience Symposium - abstracts

The following ISS21 research clusters hosted this event: Crime and Social Harm; Genders, Sexualities and Families; Populism and the Rise of the Far-right; Research for Civil Society, Environment and Social Action (REACT) and Work, Organisations and Welfare. 

This event was funded through the Collective Social Futures Interdisciplinary Research Fund and the ISS21 Small Grants Scheme. 

For more on this story contact:

Jody Moore-Ponce jponce@ucc.ie