The International Conference of Autoethnography 2026 will take place from Sunday 12th July to Tuesday 14th of July 2026 online (via Zoom) and in-person at The Engineer’s House, Clifton Village, Bristol, UK. Please scroll down the page for additional information, or navigate through the menu at the top of the page .
ICAE2026 Conference Theme:
Connections
David Bohm wrote: “Our future depends on whether we feel like part of this whole or whether we feel we’re separate.” Although these words were published nearly 50 years ago, they are more pertinent than ever in a climate of fracturing global connections and relationships. ICAE2026 invites you to address connections in and through autoethnography. Connections between diverse peoples, species, places, times, cultures and identities. Connections across disciplinary boundaries, theoretical perspectives, philosophical positions, and genres of inquiry. Connections across belief systems and ways of being. ICAE2026 invites you to story, perform, theorise and reimagine myriad connections within the human and the more-than-human world.
Bohm, D. (1980). Wholeness and the implicate order. Routledge. (p. 28)
Information & What’s On
Pre Conference workshops
To register for one of our five online workshops please complete the registration form or contact Nadia admin2@boomerang-project.org.uk
| Wednesday 8th July | Ethical Challenges in Autoethnography: Considerations in the Round 5pm-8pm (BST) 1pm-5pm (USA Brazil) |
| Thursday 9th July | Autoethnography for Beginners 2pm-5pm Kitrina & David |
| Friday 10th July | Safeguarding in Autoethnography: Strategies and Practices for Wellbeing and Mental health 5-8pm |
| Saturday/ Sunday 11th & 12th July 10am – 2:30pm (BST) 5am (EDT) 6pm (JST) | Two day woekshop Creating Poetry in Research: From social science research to a life giving practice |
| Sat 11th 3pm -5pm (BST) | Haunting, autoethnography and critical family histories. Esther Fitzpatrick University of Auckland, New Zealand |
Find additional information about the workshops here: https://boomerang-project.org.uk/workshops-2/
To register for the conference please select from the above links or the following https://boomerang-project.org.uk/registration/
To submit an abstract or join a panel, or to propose a round table please select from the above menu or use links https://boomerang-project.org.uk/workshops/
If you need further information contact
admin2@boomerang-project.org.uk
We try to respond in a timely manner, however, please remember we are a small team of volunteers and there may be a delay in responding.
Keynotes:
Durell M. Callier and Dominique C. Hill their presentation abstract is below
Infinite Knots: On staying Connected & Weaving our We
What are the necessary tools needed to stay connected in this political moment, across geographies, and despite all the forces that would seek to separate us? Through dance, collage, and poetic reflection, this performative autoethnographic inquiry weaves together nearly two decades of collective practice to map the infinite knots that have held us together — and the ones that nearly came undone. Here, we interrogate connection itself: as deliberate, iterative, political, and our key to survival. We honor those in the room, those who could not stay, and our co-conspirators across borders whose global solidarities have and continue to sustain our work. In a fractured world hungry for belonging, we ask: what does connection make possible — and why do we fundamentally struggle with it? This offering is both archive and invitation, a reckoning with why weaving our we is not incidental to liberation work; it is the work.
Dominique Hill Storied by elders as “dancing before she could walk,” Dr. Dominique C. Hill is a lover, poet, vulnerability guide, and interdisciplinary scholar. Zo’s written and performed scholarship traces the living edges of Black girlhood and Blackqueer intimacies. Hill’s artistic practice, research, writing, and communal engagement destabilizes domination, investigates material and normalized borders, as well as engenders deeper intimacy and embodied living. Zo was a 2025 Millay Arts fellow, a 2024-2025 artist in residence at Stone Quarry Hill Art Park , and a 2024 recipient of New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Support for Artists grant. Hill is the author of four books, including the recent Black Gurl Reliable (Vanderbilt 2025). Through research, pedagogy, and praxis, Hill extends the field of Black Girlhood Studies as an Assistant professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at Colgate University. Visit https://www.dominiquechill.co/ for more information.
Durell Callier is an artist-scholar, who employs Black feminist and queer methodologies to explore the interconnectivity of race, gender, sexuality, and culture. His research explores how Black art and creative practices respond to and reimagine anti-Black and anti-queer violence. He is co-author of two books, Who look at me?!: Shifting the Gaze of Education Through Blackness, Queerness, and the Body (Brill, 2019), and Performative Intergenerational Dialogues of a Black Quartet: Qualitative Inquiries on Race, Gender, Sexualities, and Culture (Routledge, 2022). Callier is an Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware.
Our second keynote will be delivered by Brazilian scholars Marcelo Diversi, Washington State University Vancouver and Claudio Moreira, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Marcelo and Claudio have forged a formidable writing/research collaboration going back several decades. Their 2018 book “Betweener autoethnographies: A path toward social justice” won the National Communication Association, Division of Ethnography, 2019 Best Book Award
Marcelo Diversi My scholarship has focused on examining and deconstructing narratives of Us versus Them that have historically been used to exclude and dominate the Other. I have attempted to trouble the ideologies behind much of knowledge production about the Other, while interrogating dominant narratives of “deviance” and “free will.” I have tried to do so by advancing ethnographic narratives that highlight the encounter between researcher and collaborators (as opposed to the traditional detached observation and description of the Other from “everywhere”), and narratives that invite the reader to see themselves, even if ever fleetingly, in Other people’s lives. The central goal of my scholarship is to expose the social structures and mechanisms that officially justify exclusionary ideologies, policies, and practices, while also sharing ideas on how to move toward a more inclusive and kinder world for more beings.
Claudio Moreira From the intersection of race, gender, and class, to name a few, I write Performance Autoethnographies looking at words, knowledge, concepts, and actions, which expose differences and also shape, marked bodies into the world. My work can be found at International Review of Qualitative Research, Qualitative Inquiry, Text and Performance Quarterly, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies. My two books, co-authored with Marcelo Diversi, are Betweener Talk: Decolonizing Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Praxis (Left Coast Press, 2009) and Betweener Autoethnographies: A Path towards Social Justice (Routledge, 2018).
Panel Sessions: Poetry, Songs & Lyrical Understandings
Annalise Elliott, University of West London “Mother”
Lucinda Bolton, Keele University Living in Nights: Sleep, Motherhood and the Longing to Be Known
Panel Session: On the move
Chloe Norton-Lamb, University of West London “Road to Kona”
Nadia Portelli, University of Malta, “2.9 Million Connections”
Niel Stader, University of West Scotland,
Panel Session From our own correspondent
coming soon
Panel Session Can I speak with my father
coming soon
Hosting Difference Round Table
Autoethnographic spaces, such as this conference, facilitate sharing personal experience with others. Each person’s experience is undoubtedly rooted in their unique and emergent pathway in the world. Since no pathway is exactly the same as another, autoethnographic experience and, by implication, autoethnographic spaces are characterised by difference.
At the same time, we recognise our own experience in the voices of others. Others’ experiences resonate with our own – we recognise resonant similarities across difference.
But what happens when difference becomes problematic? Does the cultivation of a reflexive autoethnographic sensibility exclude the possibility of problematic difference?
Do we, as Autoethnographers sometimes also need to deal with what happens when our own way-of-being in the world (to which we are seeking to be authentic) meets with another way-of-being in the world – even within an autoethnographic community – which we find problematic, or vice versa? What do we do with such difference? How can such encounters be navigated? Do they just remain difficult, or can fruitful things emerge?
This roundtable session invites discussion around these themes. If you would like to be actively involved in this discussion, for example (a) through attending the session, or (b) contributing to the panel, please contact Jamie Barnes Jamie.Barnes@sussex.ac.uk . You might like to describe why this theme piques your interest or what you would like to bring to the discussion.
The following provide a taster for some of the amazing presentations scheduled at the conference:
| Ann Delilkan, New York City College of Technology, City University of New York | Scrub a Little Harder? |
| Peter Hone, Northumbria University | The Scared Child An Autoethnographical Journey of Cultural Awakening |
| Victoria Wright Loughborough University | Cultivating a space for education for sustainable development |
| S. Luke Anderson Tennessee Tech University | Please Stop Attacking My Marriage |
| Liz Deutsch, Coventry University | Imagining and Re-Imagining Family |
| Jane Speedy University of Bristol | Painting matters |
| John Cook Independent | Researcher Visiting my younger self in London at a time of squatting, conflict and cooperation: the discomfort resulting from reconstructing my past |
| Jess Moriarty and Vanessa Marr University of Brighton | Mothers and Fairy Tales: A collaborative autoethnographic account of our experience as mothers who work in academia |
| Nicole Broder, David Yellin Academic College, Jerusalem, Israel | Lost in Translation; The Challenges and Opportunities of Immigrant Teachers |
Looking for inspiration?
We invite you to subscribe to our youtube channel, access the hundreds presentations in our conference library and gain a feel for the diverse types of presentation, performances and contributions, that give the conference a particular feel.
The presentations available via our YouTube conference page https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWNYTUbli3wRLda7ZmbpqOQ/videos include keynote presentations from Carolyn Ellis, Art Bochner, Tony Adams, David Carless, Bryant Keith Alexander, Gayle Letherby, Djenane Ramalho-de-Oliveira, Christopher Poulos, Stacy Holman Jones & Daniel X. Harris, Ken Gale, Trude Klevan, Sophie Tammas. In addition, the resource holds presentations from scholars across the globe studying a myriad of issues, ethical challenges and dilemmas.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWNYTUbli3wRLda7ZmbpqOQ/videos
Awards
There is still time to make a nomination for the Lifetime Contribution Please send nominations to trude.goril.klevan@usn.no or the Film and Dissertation thesis Award Please send nominations to Knut.Tore.Salor@usn.no
For registration and abstract submission please follow the links at the top of this page or contact our administration team at:
Venue
IN-PERSON ATTENDANCE
VENUE: The Engineer’s House, Clifton Village, Bristol
Cost of the in-person registration includes two course hot lunch and unlimited coffees/teas/fruit and biscuits each day.
Delegates can engage in as little or as much of the main programme as suits their interest and needs. There are numerous intimate spaces to share conversations, food or just to rest, along with areas for larger groups and collegiate dining.
Select this link to register https://boomerang-project.org.uk/registration/
Clifton Village is an area of the city bursting with contemporary independent cafes, bars, restaurants, and boutiques as well as typical cosy English pubs.
The venue is also situated adjacent to Clifton Gorge and the Bristol Suspension Bridge. It backs onto the Bristol Downs park, and a short stroll over the suspension bridge takes you into Ashton Park and Leigh Woods.
If you would like to register for the conference or submit an abstract please use the main navigation tools at the top of the page.
How should I present my work at the ICAE conference?
There is (fortunately) not an unequivocal answer to this. We encourage you to present your work in a manner that communicates with the audience, in a form you feel comfortable with. We want this to be an inspiring experience for you and the audience. The ICAE is not an “ordinary research conference” where the aim is to present research findings in a scientific IMRAD structure. Thus, PowerPoint presentations with bullet points might not be the best way to share your work. We encourage you to find other ways of presenting – for example reading, performing, photo or film. Feel free – just remember to stick to the time frame.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWNYTUbli3wRLda7ZmbpqOQ/videos
