Automated Autobiographical Interview

How Do People Structure Their Life Stories? 
Personal life narratives provide deep insights into how individuals structure and interpret their experiences. This project seeks to analyze the content of personal memories by developing and applying a structured coding scheme. We will first manually code a set of life narratives to identify key features and themes. Then, we will work toward automating the coding process by training a machine-learning tool to recognize and categorize narrative elements.
This project offers a unique opportunity to engage with both qualitative and quantitative research methods, combining cognitive psychology, narrative analysis, and computational approaches.
Get involved and gain hands-on research experience!
If you're interested in how people recall and organize their life experiences—and how we can use technology to analyze these narratives—this project is for you! Students will participate in both manual coding and the development of an automated tool to enhance large-scale narrative research.
Student Commitment:
Students are expected to commit at least 10–15 hours per week, including:

• Manual annotation of narrative data (~8–10 hours)
• A weekly project meeting (~30 minutes)
• Readings and discussions on narrative analysis and machine learning (~2 hours)

We’ll make sure the readings are both foundational works in the field and genuinely engaging.
Interested students should contact Çağla Aydın cagla.aydin@sabanciuniv.edu describing their motivation for joining and any relevant experience.