A Narrative Inquiry into the Lived Experiences of a Transgender Teenager in Education and Beyond

Uden, Tegan (2025) A Narrative Inquiry into the Lived Experiences of a Transgender Teenager in Education and Beyond. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This study explores the storied experiences of a transgender teenager within a UK secondary school and their wider life. This exploration seeks to understand and account for how concepts of identity, power, and belonging interact and intersect and to what extent this may promote or hinder positive experiences.

This study uses a narrative inquiry methodology to gain a rich and nuanced understanding of the embodied and relational dimensions of school life for one transgender young person. The focus on a single participant serves as a powerful lens through which broader social and institutional dynamics can be critically examined, without reducing the participant’s experience to a tokenised example. The study also uses the new materialist framework of assemblage theory to understand how the stories of a transgender teenager are influenced by different entanglements of human, non-human, and material relations.

Findings highlight important narrative threads around community, both on-and-offline, shifting concepts of visibility, and emergent, fluid identity development. All three narrative threads offer instances of affirmation, relief and belonging while also being areas which can require careful navigation to reduce feelings of apprehension or perceived threat. At a time when wider social discussions about transgender young people do not readily account for their voices, this study provides an opportunity to gain an important insight into the lived experiences of one transgender teenager. In doing so it highlights important questions and reflections for professionals and researchers alike about how to better support transgender young people and involve them as active participants in telling their own stories

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	09 Dec 2025 09:16
Last Modified:	09 Dec 2025 09:16
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101343
DOI:

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