Flexible and Complex Families Across the Life-Course (FAMFLEX). (FAMFLEX)

Families today come in various shapes and forms, characterized by a wide range of cultural, economic, social, and psychological determinants, and show increasingly "diverging destinies". The inherently dynamic nature of what comprises a family and how it is understood on both individual and societal level, therefore gives way to a continuous process of "doing family". The practices of doing family are shaped by social norms, inspired by cultural products that imagine possible families and regulated by a legal framework, all of which are dynamic in their own right. The overall aim of the FAMFLEX consortium is to advance theoretical sociological, literary and legal insights into how increasingly flexible and complex family practices (the families we live "by") unfold across cohorts within sociological and legal structures and institutions (the families we live "in"). This requires an interdisciplinary and mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approach using largescale datasets and advanced analytical techniques. We develop and apply state-of-the art social science methods, socio-legal and literary approaches, embedded in the legal consideration of the constraints on current day family complexity. The innovative integration of classic (longitudinal) methodology with digital humanities (textual big data analysis incl. large language models), coupled with three main theoretical frameworks of life-course, gender, and ethnic and religious diversity, will push forward our sociological, legal and literary insights in how "doing family" unfolds today.

Keywords:DIGITAL HUMANITIES, FAMILY LAW, SOCIAL SCIENCES

Disciplines:Family law, Sociology of life course, family and health not elsewhere classified, Stylistics and textual analysis, Theory and methodology of language studies not elsewhere classified