Workshops

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Pre conference Workshops are Online, via zoom, on Sunday 16th July

Workshop Abstract: The focus of the workshop will be to explore autoethnographic experiences and materials including research data, pedagogic reflections, emotional, practical, theoretical and P/political concerns and actions. In addition to writing some short pieces of prose/poetry/song lyrics we will also engage in some creative editing. Similar workshops took place at the International Autoethnography conferences of 2020, 2021 and 2022 and although the writing and editing tasks will be similar the substantive foci and some of the exercises will be different. If you enjoyed previous workshops please come again. If you are new to this way of writing, of working, of creating, please be reassured that others find it enjoyable and enriching.  All you need to bring is a paper and pen/tablet/computer and your personal and political imagination.

Gayle Letherby I am Visiting Professor at the Universities of Plymouth, Greenwich and Bath (specifically at Bath within the Centre for Death Studies (CDAS)). Alongside substantive interests in the meanings and experiences of love, reproductive and non/parental (especially non/mother) identities; gender, health and wellbeing; death, loss and bereavement; travel and transport mobility; gender and identity within institutions; and solitude I have always been fascinated by research methodology, including auto/biographical, feminist and creative practices. In recent years I have become interested in writing sociologically for non-academic audiences and creative writing within academic work.  For some examples of different sorts of writing see https://www.abctales.com/user/gletherby

The spider in my backyard challenges me to encounter it, to enter its world. To do so, I must let go – at least for a time – of other pressing engagements. I must slow down, be still, and lend my attention to this wonderful eight-legged beast in all its complex entanglements. As I do so, a space of encounter dawns, and educative threads weave their slow emergence. Not only do I awaken to the rustle of the wind, its caress upon my skin and its waving rhythms in the leaves before me. I also notice the still patience with which she sits, eight hair-laced legs sensitively placed to trace the smallest of vibrations. And now – very slowly – in the stillness – in fleeting moments only – a part of me reaches across the divide, the space between our radically different evolutionary paths. In waves, I begin to appreciate the phenomenological life of this differently-bodied being, so Other to myself. I am lost in the flow. What does her little, complex body afford? What world does she habit and perceive? My reflections gradually fold back upon myself. The alterity of the spider’s body – and this encounter in my yard – bringing awareness of my own body, with its very different set of affordances…In this workshop, we take such encounters with differently bodied beings as a starting place to reflect on the experiencing body and the various ways in which it is understood and objectified. Starting with animal-human encounters, we move to consider other extra-ordinary encounters that challenge the boundaries of the body and may cause us to think about our experiences of being human differently. Trigger Warning: Jamie Barnes is a Christian phenomenologist. As part of this workshop we will be considering encounters with the divine (as a mysterious, but nonetheless agential being) and the effects that this might have on a person’s sense of self.

Workshop Abstract TBCI invite you to join this online workshop, the idea of which emerged from my forthcoming (late 2023/early 2024) edited Routledge volume, Writing Philosophical Autoethnography (WPAE). The overall aim of the workshop is for us to actively explore together 3 related themes raised by me in the introductory chapter of the volume (themes which have preoccupied and troubled me for years, prompting my original idea for producing WPAE). We will consider the relevance of ideas emerging from the themes explored for your own autoethnographic projects.  The themes are: the philosophical basis of autoethnography, narrative selfhood, and cultural selfhood.The workshop will be divided into 4 half hour parts. In parts 1-3, we will explore each of the above themes in sequence, with the following structure: focusing on writing that has inspired my work (mostly philosophers), we will read together selected sections from my introductory chapter of WPAE, corresponding to each of the themes*. This will be followed by a group discussion, and time for you to begin to write or plan your ongoing projects or consider what has been most meaningful for you and your writing. The final part will be a plenary session with an opportunity for those who would like to, to share something from what you have written. This will allow us as a group to consider both opportunities and challenges that may arise, steps you might take to overcome the latter, and any other issues that have emerged for you during the workshop.(*to me provided ahead of workshop, I will be emailing out 3 word attachments (philosophical basis, narrative selfood, cultural selfhood) to you a week before. This will also give us a chance to say hello to each other.) 

Alec Grant, PhD is currently Visiting Professor in the Department of Education and Psychology, University of Bolton, UK. His academic background is in psychology, cultural studies, psychotherapy, qualitative and narrative inquiry – subsuming ethnography and autoethnography, and philosophy. He was the 2020 recipient of the International Conference of Autoethnography (ICAE) Inaugural Lifetime Contribution Award. Well published, in many autoethnographic journal articles and book chapters, he is on the international editorial board of the Journal of Autoethnography. He co-edited Contemporary British Autoethnography (2013, Sense Publishers) and International Perspectives on Autoethnographic Research and Practice (2018, Routledge), and with Trude Klevan co-wrote An Autoethnography of Becoming a Qualitative Researcher: A Dialogic View of Academic Development (2022, Routledge). His forthcoming edited Routledge text – Writing Philosophical Autoethnography –is the result of his vision of bringing together the disciplines of philosophy and autoethnography. In constituting a major development and challenge to autoethnographic scholarship, it is the first volume of narrative autoethnographic work in which invited contributing authors explore their issues, concerns, and topics about human society, culture, and the material world through an explicitly philosophical lens.