“Relevance” is one of the most widely used buzz words in academic and other socio -political

discourses and institutions today, which constantly ask us to “be relevant.” To date, there is no
profound scholarly conceptualization of the term, however, which is widely accepted in the
humanities. Relevance and Narrative Research closes this gap by initiating a discussion which
turns the vaguely defined evaluative tool “relevance” into an object of study. The contributors to
this volume do so by firmly situating questions of relevance in the context of narrative theory.
Briefly put, they ask either “What can ‘relevance’ do for narrative research?” or “What can
narrative research do for better understanding ‘relevance?’” or both.