Autoethnographic Account Research Articles

Frustration, Examination, Appreciation: An Autoethnography of a Psychotherapist’s Work with a Challenging Patient

Treating challenging patients can be a rewarding or detrimental experience for a psychotherapist. Countertransference plays a large part of the success of the therapeutic relationship. Countertransference is what gets stimulated in the psychotherapist in response to what the patient is experiencing. Countertransference includes feelings, thoughts, and sensations. If a psychotherapist has not examined his or her own issues of countertransference, the results can be harmful to both the patient and the professional. However, if a psychotherapist is aware of his or her feelings of countertransference, it can be used to bring about growth and development to the patient and the psychotherapist. This article is an autoethnographical account of a psychotherapist’s (my) experience with a challenging patient. It describes how I went through a process of frustration, examination, and appreciation as a result of a conflict between myself and the patient. I used a diary to record my feelings about the patient; this assisted me in confronting my countertransference and ultimately reconciling with the patient and using the experience to bring about healing for myself and the patient.

The “diseased” activist's body as the site of trauma: Anti‐racist struggles and the postrace academy

AbstractThis paper is an autoethnographic account of the “racialized activist body” in the White academy and in tandem the bio‐politics and bio‐ethics of its right to be an affective body or to possess its senses against the trauma of anti‐racist struggles in higher education institutions. The paper argues that in the postrace university, the “activist body” birthed through trauma becomes a conduit for the pain of others enacting it as a site for the deposition and transmutation of trauma in the quest for racial and social justice. It employs Bracha Ettinger’s notion of “matrixial borderspace” to examine the interplay of social relations between of the activist body and other traumatized subjects in the provision of care as an activist. Two narratives unfold in the paper fusing the articulations of the main text with the paratext to unleash the tumultuous psyche of the activist and her journey of voicing resistance in her anti‐racist struggles. In the process, the activist body emerges as a “diseased site,” overloaded with the trauma of others, yet numbed in its inability to reconnect with its own corporeality and professional identity in its interface with White governmentality. The paper asserts that anti‐racist struggles reassemble the activist body, tightly welding it with exhaustion which manifests in the pervasiveness of racial battle fatigue in the ivory tower.

Editors’ Note

Editors’ Note

Tangled, tangy, microbial threads: Textural methods for rendering past, present, and future sensory memories

How to render sensory memory? In this article, I speculate on the possibilities of textural methods which attend closely to textile forms, specifically embroidery, as a way to explore this enduring question in multimodal research. To open up concerns about bodily relations between humans, as well as the more-than-human bodies we share worlds with, this article focuses on sensory memory fragments of encounters with the microbial conglomerations of sourdough bread starter. I offer three bubbling, sour-sweet texts: 1) an archived auto-ethnographic account of learning how to make a sourdough starter; 2) a social-media inspired piece on the sticky home archives of quarantine; and 3) a future speculative citizen science project. These fragments co-exist with microbes I have embroidered on ancient linens. From the tangy strings of sourdough histories, and the tangled threads in cloth I draw concrete methodological suggestions for new directions in textural research projects, such as material fieldnotes and crafted data. In doing so, I join other authors in this special issue in the call for multimodal forms of ethnographic storytelling about sensory memory, in this case one that attends not only to messy entanglements with bodies but also their textural, material, layered histories extending into the depth of their surfaces.

‘Coach, or female coach? And does it matter?’: An autoethnography of playing the gendered game over a twenty-year elite swim coaching career

ABSTRACT Women are under-represented in high-performance head coach positions throughout global sport. To shed light on why this under-representation exists within UK swimming, an autoethnographic account of the first author’s experiences as a woman who competed and coached in high-performance swimming over a thirty-year career is presented. Critical reflexive conversations with the second author, coupled with sourcing artefacts such as memories, photographs and emails inspired four evocative personal stories that chart the voyage of: 1) a child entering and aspiring in the sport, 2) the transition from a retired female athlete to novice coach; 3) progression in becoming an international coach, and; 4) reaching the pinnacle of a coaching career and then beginning a coach tutor role. Accounts of how gender as a relation of power was exercised and navigated during the inauguration and progression as a woman who coached in a patriarchal profession are offered. In the pursuit of winning Olympic medals, an unrecognised double bind was revealed to have been negotiated throughout the entirety of the coach development pathway whereby masculine ideals were uncritically reproduced within the cultural landscape of elite UK swimming. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, capital, field and doxa offer analytical insight for how masculine norms were socially reproduced. This double bind is argued as having and continuing to impede women coaches’ progression towards achieving equality within high-performance settings like UK swimming. The study highlights the value of acknowledging socio-cultural factors in coach education to address gender imbalances at an elite level.

COVID-19 Changes Teaching Practices: An Autoethnographic Account of a Japanese EFL Teacher

COVID-19 has affected university educators on a global scale, and Japan is not an exception. Many EFL educators, including myself, began the academic year with much uncertainty as to how things would unfold. And, like many other EFL teachers in Japan, my spring semester classes were taught fully online. This study intends to illustrate the experience of a Japanese EFL university teacher amid COVID-19. It portrays how I initially changed my teaching practices to cope with the difficult situation but ended the semester with an increased feeling of competence as an educator. This experience is described autoethnographically in a three-part journey: Sho, chiku, bai. As Chang (2008) points out, one danger in autoethnography is excessive focus on the self. In order to avoid this, artifacts and comments of the students whom I taught were used for analysis in addition to autoethnographic reflections. Results pointed to three obstacles that I faced. Rewriting the course syllabus, getting students accustomed to information technology and altering my teaching practices. However, by the end of the semester students appeared to have developed close interpersonal relationships amongst their peers, improved IT literacy, and increased their motivation to study English. These positive results boosted my feeling of efficacy as an educator. Findings imply that there may be ways to change this tough COVID-19 situation into an opportunity to grow as a teacher. The research may provide instructional ideas that could possibly be implemented into other Asian EFL educators’ classrooms.

The academic labour of knowledge mobilization: What scholarly publishers need to know

AbstractWhile scholarly publishers have become increasingly interested in supporting the sharing of research beyond academia in recent times, there are few first‐hand accounts from academics that illustrate the realities and complexities of this process. As such, scholarly publishers may be somewhat in the dark about what is actually involved in such knowledge mobilization, and how to best support it. In this autoethnographic account, I describe my experience as an early career researcher involved in the creation of 14 scholarly outputs on the 2016Western Australian Study in Children's Book Readingproject. I illustrate how these scholarly outputs led to media engagements and Plain Language publications, and then were transformed into unique initiatives driven by schools and state government. The academic labour involved in these knowledge mobilization components are depicted as substantial. I also critically interrogate my own research training background and dispositions to identify some reasons for my adoption of knowledge mobilization as a priority, despite perceiving a general lack of support and recognition for this work. Finally, given the pragmatic considerations I raise in this article, I outline ways that scholarly publishers can support academic researchers to engage in knowledge mobilization more regularly and effectively.

Xenophilia in a Multi-cultural Urban Neighborhood of Pretoria, South Africa: An Auto-ethnographic Account

Xenophilia in a Multi-cultural Urban Neighborhood of Pretoria, South Africa: An Auto-ethnographic Account

A song of teaching with free software in the Anthropocene

Bernard Stiegler highlights many of the problems faced by education with respect to the ‘bringing forth’ of knowledge on an individual, collective, and technical level in the Anthropocene. These problems include the short-circuiting of dreams, automatization of thought, and toxic digital networks. Stiegler’s φάρμακον (pharmakon) seeks to treat the toxicity of the Anthropocene with a care-ful hermeneutic approach that is directed towards the disautomatized, inventive, co-individuating knowledge act. This paper first explores Stiegler’s Anthropocene and his development of Heideggerian ποίησις (poeisis) in terms of the challenge of the ‘bringing forth’ of knowledge acts, which are illustrated by free software. It then explores, through the additional example of free radio, of Félix Guattari’s work in free radio, the problem and possibility of creative co-individuating ex-pression in the Anthropocene by expanding on Stiegler’s emphasis on the importance of hermeneutics. This raises the question of how to read Stiegler’s own ex-pression of the future of knowledge. Next, the paper reviews Stiegler’s educational project involving a dis-automatizable hermeneutic web. Finally, the paper gives an autoethnographic account of an attempt to ‘bring forth’ learning through the implementation of free software in local, online classrooms. The free software example does not solve the problem of the Anthropocene but does raise the question of our responsibility to choose our digital tools care-fully and the importance of maintaining the possibility of co-individuating ex-pression like the kind that is remembered in song and which online education should remind us of.

EU-India relations in the multi-vector matrix of science diplomacy and Asia-Europe Meeting

Online training events deserve more attention as a form of people-to-people connectivity. The purpose of the article is to elaborate on how online training events gain prominence in the context of the COVID-19 imposed restrictions on geographical mobility. The autoethnographic account provides new ideas on what higher education extra-curricular and capacity building activities should be taken into consideration when taking a comprehensive look at people-to-people sustainable connectivity. As the analysed three online training events that took place over the summer 2020 show, these virtual occasions of people-to-people connectivity are promising building blocks for the future exploration of the EU structural diplomacy towards India both in a bilateral setting and multilateral context of Asia-Europe Meeting.

Gringa tales in favela Santa Marta

ABSTRACT This paper provides an autoethnographic account through tourist favela Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro. It aims to grasp the role of tourists’ practices and performances and their potential to re-signify and transform the physical, social, and cultural landscape of slummed communities at urban destinations. Tourism in informal urban settlements is a phenomenon studied from different disciplines and perspectives, mainly covering representational and ethical issues. The paper incorporates insights from the Performative Turn and relational studies to guide the author’s reflection over her cultural experience as a favela tourist/researcher. These stories compound the myriad of heterogeneous elements making and shaping the favelas’ complex and dynamic assemblages. They also unveil multiple underlying issues that could be further analyzed from different scopes. Finally, favela tourism is seen as an avenue to foster social change. Autoethnography was first being applied to slum tourism research, and it proved to be a useful method to embrace the subjectivities of the field.

From an aviatrix to a eugenicist: walking with Manchester’s Modernist Heroines

This article offers an autoethnographic account of developing a multidisciplinary feminist local history project. In particular it focuses on the construction and delivery of a walking tour celebrating ‘Manchester’s Modernist Heroines’. These were ten women from Greater Manchester, UK, who achieved professional success in the twentieth century. The author evokes ideas of psychogeography and the dérive to produce a tour with collaboration, accessibility and public participation at the heart of its ethos. However the notion of a psychogeographical heritage tour is an oxymoron as the praxis resists essentialist notions of time and space. Additionally, the women featured did not have blue plaques, stately homes or any of the conventional badges of achievement. The focus instead was on resonances, echoes, connections and traces in the everyday landscape. Some, such as Marie Stopes, have a complex and deeply problematic legacy. Geographer Doreen Massey, born in Manchester and one of the subjects, provided inspiration with her progressive vision of space as a simultaneity of ‘stories-so-far.’ The traditional heritage tour became reconfigured as something overtly and proudly performative, participatory and fluid. The route and location contributions are anchored in is mutable, with content evolving as new stories are shared. The walk incorporates education, conversation, art and provocation. This is Feminist public pedagogy which uses the pedestrian to examine issues around commemoration, memory, gender and the right to the city. It utilises embodied creative walking methods to uncover the power dynamics that shape Manchester and offer an alternative way to view them.

Lessons from Postgraduate Supervision in Two African Universities: An Autoethnographic Account

This paper presents an evocative autoethnographic account of my postgraduate supervision experience in two African institutions while dealing mainly with students in the computing disciplines of Computer Science, Information Systems, and Information Technology. In this paper, the context of the postgraduate supervision, and the lessons learnt are presented based on personal reflection, students’ feedback, and retrospective analysis on my activities as an absorbed participant in the supervision process. The reflection of my supervision process offers vital lessons for all supervisors in the developing country context who are torn between the requirements for the student to do quality work and get published in top journals, and the challenges in their operational environment and students’ lives. The study also recommends some good practices that could help supervisors that are operating in similar contexts to mine.

A Voice Within: An Autoethnographic Account of Moving from Closed to Open Prison Conditions by a Life‐Sentenced Prisoner

AbstractThis article explores the lived experience of transitioning from closed to open prison conditions by a mandatory life‐sentenced prisoner. Using autoethnographic methodology the lead author's experience of this significant life‐sentence event forms the basis of a wider discussion. Research around this process is lacking. This article examines the phenomena around prisoner identity, prison culture and prisoner adaptation; it explores what impact of years spent in the closed prison estate can have on how open prison conditions are experienced. The authors identify important social and ontological obstacles to successful transition to open conditions and reflect on how it exposes the enduring harms resultant from serving a life sentence.

“When I Least Expected It”: an Autoethnography of Reporting Workplace Sexual Harassment and Compassionate Bystanders”

I present an evocative autoethnographic account of reporting workplace sexual harassment that illustrates the decision-making and satisfaction (or lack thereof) with reporting and interactions with and perceptions of compassionate bystanders not only during but also after the actual incident. While reporting is lauded as the key to deterrence and as a successful approach to dealing with the stresses of harassment, it alone does not fully address emotional harms associated with workplace sexual harassment in organizational environments often more compliant than compassionate. In contrast, this article aligns with emerging evidence that views bystanders as underused resources who can deter sexual harassment and bring needed respite to victim’s suffering through compassionate noticing, feeling, and responding. While my account is personal and cannot be generalized to others, it does offer both a familiar and theoretically informed narrative that describes the prolonged presence and engagement of compassionate bystanders in my experience of workplace sexual harassment and reveals bystander compassion as the key to offset the gap where reporting as remediation neither sufficiently heals the victim nor redresses persist sexual harassment in the workplace.

Spaces and Places

This essay is an autoethnographic account of the ways Black cultural performance, specifically Black social dance, works to produce and maintain Black cultural space in predominantly white spaces. I consider the significance of the “City Boy Wit It” song and dance as an expression of Black identity that marks Blackness in Tampa, FL. By framing my personal experiences through a discussion of Black identity and Black space, I critically examine larger issues of Black performativity and Black cultural spaces.

Encounters with borders

This article examines (im)obility in the global visa regime through the experiences of a Global South academic working in the Global North. Drawing on an autoethnographic account of a visa application, this article outlines the ways in which the global visa regime negatively affects a Global South academic’s life. Visa regulations constitute a particular Global South academic subject in the Global North, one whose academic career is characterised by uncertainty and anxiety, as visas can limit access to promotions and to fieldwork and research opportunities. Visa experiences can thus contribute to alienation and non-belonging of Global South scholars in academia, while impacting knowledge production and teaching.

Policing the Pedal Rebels: A Case Study of Environmental Activism Under COVID-19

Australia, along with nation-states internationally, has entered a new phase of environmentally focused activism, with globalised, coordinated and social media–enabled environmental social movements seeking to address human-induced climate change and related issues such as the mass extinction of species and land clearing. Some environmental protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion (XR) have attracted significant political, media and popular commentary for their sometimes theatrical and disruptive forms of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. Drawing on green and cultural criminology, this article constitutes an autoethnographic account of environmental protest during the final stages of the initial COVID-19 lockdown in NSW, Australia. It takes as a case study a small protest by an XR subgroup called the Pedal Rebels. The article explores the policing of environmental protest from an activist standpoint, highlighting the extraordinary police resources and powers mobilised to regulate a small peaceful group of ‘socially distanced’ protesters operating within the existing public health orders. It places an autoethnographic description of this protest in the context of policing practice and green and cultural criminology. Additionally, it outlines the way in which such policing is emboldened by changes to laws affecting environmental protest, making activism an increasingly risky activity.

Negotiating tensions: an autoethnographic account of classroom-based research

In this paper, I present my experiences as an emerging classroom-based researcher. Using personal narratives, I examine the tensions that emerge from the emotional work often required to conduct educational research. This autoethnographic approach explores the complexity of student-teacher interactions using Swanson’s middle-range theory of caring. In reflecting on my experiences, I hope to inform emerging researchers’ understanding of reflexive practices as a way of developing critical spaces within PK-12 educational research.

Performative identity and the researcher as drag: an autoethnographic account of positionality in educational research

ABSTRACT The following article comprises an autoethnographic discussion of researcher identity in school-based educational research. The research centred on a professional learning programme in which arts/education practitioners delivered workshops for teachers that used creative, arts practice with a focus on mindful techniques to support teachers’ wellbeing during school improvement initiatives. I developed a reflexive, participatory methodology that comprised interviews with the arts/education practitioners, and observations of the workshops in order to generate data that explored how creativity was articulated through the programme. My discussion focuses on the appropriateness of the research design and qualitative, reflexive methodology to addressing the research aims, and on my values and positionality throughout the data generation activity and subsequent analysis. Finally, I discuss my shifting identity/ies in what I define as a queer/ed research space, and conceptualize my performative researcher identity as a form of drag.