Encouraged by his supervisor, Barrington Walker, to include in his introduction an overview of theoretical approaches to biography, PhD candidate Daniel R. Meister realized that little had been written on the subject. His resulting review of the literature, combined with a defense of biography as a historical methodology, was subsequently published as “The biographical turn and the case for historical biography” in the journal History Compass. This article garnered him an invitation to speak at the international conference “Different Lives: Global Perspectives on Biography in Public Cultures and Societies.” Organized by the Biography Institute of the University of Groningen (Netherlands), the Biography Society, and the Biographer’s International Organization, the conference – which took place from 19-21 September 2018 – saw scholars from around the world come together to discuss how the art of biography is practiced in different national contexts. Expanded versions of the conference papers are being collected into an edited volume, which is to be published by Brill in 2019. The only graduate student to present, Daniel delivered a paper on the writing of historical biography in multicultural Canada.
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Daniel Meister
