Shedding light on the biographical research field: profiles of publication

Much has been written about the field of biographical research. Comprehensive states of the art and field mappings have enabled researchers, throughout the years, to understand the main trends of an evolving arena of knowledge production in people’s lives and their subjectivity. However, these important exercises of taking a step back to observe the field are generally based on more traditional approaches that tend to focus almost exclusively on its nucleus and main protagonists. By developing an extensive literature analysis, which provided the grounds to put in place a profile-oriented qualitative approach, we were able to shed some light on the different zones that characterise the complexity of the field (including peripheries and margins). A quantitative study of 1270 references published between 1918 and 2019, within the sociological disciplinary field, allowed us to identify three profiles of publication: precursors, engineers and explorers. In this article we depart from this tripartite configuration of the field to internally analyse the main characteristics of each profile, their core features and inner diversity. Through this in-depth qualitative analysis of the texts from each profile, we can observe the processes of institutionalisation and legitimation of the field, its inner dynamism and creativity in the development of approaches and methods, as well as the creation of specialisation trends.