The Twelfth International Conference of Autoethnography took place online (via Zoom) and in-person at The Engineer’s House, Clifton Village, Bristol, UK. The conference was preceeded by three workshops on Sunday 13th July led by Gayle Letherby, Kitrina Douglas & Djenane Ramalho-de-Oliveira and Tony Adams. The conference ran on Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th July 2025
Below we present some of the highlights of the conference, additional sessions are available on the conference YouTube channel
Conference theme
“Breathing Spaces”
We all breathe. We have this in common with each other – and with the flora and fauna of planet Earth. We may take our breath for granted – for a time. Yet breath, the act of breathing, is far from assured. We exist in atmosphere that is precarious, environments that have been violated, cities that are congested, societies driven toward inequality and division, and workplaces that threaten health and morale.
ICAE2025 offers breathing space; an invitation to story, perform, challenge, theorise, resist or reimagine spaces, relationships, and new ways of being in/for the human and more-than-human world.
Keynotes
Missing Each Other: Queer Lapses, Loves, and Longings Tony Adams, Bradley University, USA
Creating breathing spaces in a Brazilian Pharmacy School
Djenane Ramalho-de-Oliveira, Center for Pharmaceutical Care Studies, CEAF – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Spotlight Panel: From our own correspondents with Bryant Keith Alexander, Arthur Bochner, Carolyn Ellis & Chris Poulos https://youtu.be/69Fqzhy3T0Y
Session 22: Room 1 WATCH FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT From our own correspondent is the title of a long running BBC Radio 4 programme in the UK. We are using the idea behind the programme at ICAE2025 Breathing Spaces to focus on the experiences of some of our own correspondents -autoethnographers who are members of our community and who write from personal experience about the Trump administration and what this means for our colleagues living in Florida, Arizona, North Carolina and California.
Session 17: Room 1 Dissertation and Film Awards (Sponsored by Routledge)
Collaboration Award
Lifetime Contribution Award
Curated by Trude Klevan and Knut Tore Sælør WATCH AWARDS HERE
Now a firm fixture at the conference is the opportunity to mark and recognise members of our community for some of their outstanding contributions. This year, we are delighted to announce that publishers Routledge have agreed once again to sponsored the Film and Dissertation/Thesis Awards. If you would like to nominate some one for one of these awards please do so!!
Routledge – Meet the Publishers and Autoethnogrpahy around the globe
WATCH THESE SESSIONS HERE https://youtu.be/aoIdrQBI0wA
Session 5A: Room 1 Publishing Autoethnography,
Chair: Jamie Barnes.
Session 5B: Room 1
Autoethnography around the globe
Chair Jamie Barnes
Session 9: Room 1
Meditations on breath
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC-hFtPOZAk
Chair: Ken Gale
Breathless: bodying, worlding, living with a clumsy agglomeration of forces. Ken Gale, University of Plymouth
Seeking and finding my voice: a pilgrimage
Bethan Habron-James, Royal Northern College of Music
Finding some love in the blood – an autoethnography of building a soul. Sara Mollis, University of Edinburgh
Loss: The Poetics of the Everyday. Jonathan Wyatt, University of Edinburgh
Session 18: Room 1 Spotlight Panel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XoXVH_HE-k
Circulation with Autoethnography: Collaborative Process in Autoethnographic Journey
Nozomi Fujisaka, Osaka University, Aya Hayasaki, Kagoshima University, Teppei Tsuchimoto, Ritsumeikan University, Chihiro Suzuki, Higashiyodogawa Special Needs School Osaka*
Join us for a glass of wine or soft drink
If you are attending the conference in person please join us for a complimentary glass of wine or soft drink in the garden following keynote presentations on day one of the conference as we celebrate publication of Autoethnography Pedagogy and Practice: Stories of interdisciplinary innovation.
Special session have also been scheduled during the conference
Session 2: Room 2
Autoethnography Pedagogy and Practice (1)
Session 14: Room 2
Autoethnography Pedagogy and Practice (2)
Chapter authors Teppei Tsuchimoto, Nozomi Fujisaka, Yusuke Katsura, Aya Hayasaki, Mihoko Motooka, Naoko Yokoyama, Esther van der Walt & Gayle Letherby, Edwina Morris and Michael Bartholomew, Simone Kreher and Eric Seifert, Trude Klevan and Knut Tore Sælør, Djenane Ramalho-de-Oliveira, Simone de Araújo, Medina Mendonça, and Ana Cimbleris-Alkmim, Andrew Gillott and David Carless, Kitrina Douglas, Chloe Norton Lamb, and Joshua Eibenchutz,
“In progress” sessions
We are delighted to announce a continuation of our “in-progress” sessions which create a space for those new to autoethnography (or struggling with how to develop their work) to discuss ideas and possibilities from more senior academics. This year we thank Pat Sikes for leading these sessions with Tony Adams, Trude Klevan, Ken Gale and Djenane Ramalho-de-Oliveira.
Pat Sikes academic career began in 1978 and since then her interests have been around: qualitative inquiry and especially narrative and auto/biographical approaches to research/ re-presentation; research ethics; and social justice issues. In September 2018 Pat was awarded the John Nisbet Fellowship by the British Educational Research Association for an outstanding contribution to educational research over her career.
A message from the 2025 Conference Chair Jamie Barnes
Over the years, I have often wondered about the felt vibrancy of autoethnographic spaces, what makes them distinctive, how and why they tend to become imbued with a certain sense that is, in some mysterious way, mutually experienced by those who share within them. I think it’s something about similarity and difference, mixed together with healthy measures of humility, reflexivity and respect.
When we come together – in spaces such as ICAE – we turn up shaped by our own unique histories and experiences, bravely willing to voice these in whatever way we can. We also come with an openness to witness the lives of others willing to do the same. Within this mutual atmosphere of reverential respect, a strange resonance often develops, a resonance that emerges as we are invited to venture across that sometimes terrifying bridge into the foreign and fascinating lives of others, lives both completely different and yet somehow similar to our own. On such occasions, how is it that we can be rendered speechless by the life of an other, an uncanny experience of meeting something startlingly strange and yet deeply familiar? Autoethnographic spaces open up such possibilities of vibrant encounter. So come and join us this summer, seasoned with your own measures of humility, reflexivity and respect, and therefore with the promise of truly meeting others once more.
Jamie.Barnes@sussex.ac.uk
We welcome colleagues from North and South America, Scotland, Norway, Germany, Turkey, Wales, Malta, England, Hong Kong, Canada, Italy, Finland and Japan.
Program change, names added, addendum
Please note, due to an oversight Giulia Carozzi was not included on the submission a presenter, she is however presenting in the following session. Later versions of the programme have the following Session 13: Room 1
Borderlands Chair: Jonathan Wyatt
Healing Beyond Colonial Fragmentation. Mridula Sridhar, University of Edinburgh
Tales of the Night: Autoethnography and Affectivity. Chloe Young, University of Edinburgh
Reading writing breathing: a post-Buddhist autoethnographic meditative enquiry? Tim Stephens, University of the Arts London
Writing as Breathing: Autoethnography in the Space Between. Yashi Yuan, University College London*
A noise, a gesture, a road and a passing shadow: a new autoethnography course. Fiona Murray and Giulia Carozzi University of Edinburgh
