“I can’t sustain myself or this work
David Carless, 2021:241
without our community. And I suspect I am not alone in that.”
Around the world there are numerous people who meet under the umbrella of autoethnography. In what follows we would like to introduce you to some of these groups, as well as groups that whilst not explicitly autoethnographic nevertheless have a resonance with autoethnographic methods. Please reach out to the organisers if you would like to attend or learn more about each group. Please also be aware that the majority of these groups are run on a voluntary basis, so please exercise patience and respect in your communications.
South Coast Autoethnography Network (SCAN) – We are a network that originated in 2015 on the south coast of England in Brighton, meeting locally. However, we now meet primarily online and welcome autoethnographers from across the globe. We seek to facilitate vibrant conversations on autoethnography and related themes, as well as providing space for people to present their work-in-progress. Please contact Jamie Barnes if you would like to be added to our mailing list. Jamie.Barnes@sussex.ac.uk
Forum on Autoethnography and Poetic Inquiry (mainly for Japanese speakers) – The autoethnography group that my colleagues and I run in Japan is still active. We hold an annual forum in Japan and continue to engage in publications (a Japanese autoethnography book will be published very soon) and conference presentations—for example, at ICAE and ISAN. We also contributed an essay here about the founding process of FAPI (with thanks to Kitrina and David!). Please contact Teppei Tsuchimoto for more information. fapi.information@gmail.com
Autoethnography group of University of South-Eastern Norway, Drammen, Norway – We are an interest group (not a research group) of primarily Norwegian scholars. We meet outside of our regular working hours. It is something we do because we want to! We have written a co-authored paper and a book. Please contact Trude Klevan for further information. tkl@usn.no
The Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry (CCRI) fosters innovative qualitative research that places the relational at its heart. CCRI (or, as we prefer, Sea~Cry) offers a programme of events, including reading and writing groups. Sea~Cry places an emphasis on building community, welcoming participation from those within and beyond Edinburgh and from students, practitioners, faculty, and/or any with an interest. Some of its activities are in person, some online, and some hybrid. There’s a monthly email newsletter to subscribe to here. Please contact Jonathan Wyatt for more information. ccri-info@ed.ac.uk
Practice As Research – We aim to bring together the many different strands of practice-led/based research across all disciplines so as to not be limited by disciplinary conventions, but instead to benefit from cross-disciplinary fertilisation. We consider Practice As Research any practice that is underpinned by scholarship and academic rigour. Our primary aim is sharing practices, providing constructive feedback, and thus enabling the mutual development of understanding around practice as research. For more information please visit our website or contact Nicole Brown nicole.brown@ucl.ac.uk
CANI-net: collaborative artful inquiry network – We are a community of scholars; artists; teachers; activists and others who gather together within (and across) diverse fields of play to inspire; critique; support and artfully collaborate. We come together at the crossroads between scholarship, art, education and activism, where we both hold our emergent ideas and practices and allow them to filter out across the world in imaginative, playful, scholarly, speculative and artful ways. We are brought together as much by our differences as our commonalities, as well as our shared affinities with collaborative practices, and with a fluid, emergent and moving set of ideas: We have a shared history of working collaboratively together in open inquiry spaces; writing and art-making workshops; scholarly presentations; seminars and gatherings; publications; narrative inquiries; reading groups and in the promotion of other activities that encourage what we might describe as our ‘imagination-intellect’. The meetings are free to attend and we welcome all. Please visit our website or contact Melissa Dunlop for more information melissa@theinterpersonal.com