Workshops provide pedagogical spaces for both formal and informal education and conversation. The pre-conference workshops at ICAE and symposia have become important way we build, nurture and encourage our community. At ICAE all workshops will be online, while events like “reengaging the body” will be only in person. Further details about this years workshop are below.
Please scroll own the page to learn more about each workshop
Pre conference Workshops are Online, via zoom, on Sunday 21sy July
To register for the conference or workshops please follow the link https://boomerang-project.org.uk/registration/
Swooping and Swirling: murmuration in action
A Creative Writing Workshop for Academic, Practitioner and Activist Engagement and Impact
Gayle Letherby
I am Visiting Professor at the Universities of Plymouth, Greenwich and Bath (specifically at Bath within the Centre for Death and Society (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 the aftermath of death; travel and transport mobility; gender and identity within institutions; and solitude I have always been fascinated by research methodology, including autoethnographic / auto/biographical, feminist and creative practices. In recent years I have become interested in writing sociologically for non-academic audiences and embedding creative writing within academic work. For examples of fiction and memoir in academic pieces see (for example) Thirty Years and Counting | Auto/Biography Review (autobiographyreview.com) and Stories of and from solitude and companionship – The Sociological Review For examples of writing outside of academia see https://www.abctales.com/user/gletherby
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 2020-2023 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.
Black Joy Workshop
Led by Chris & Vince Omni
Chris Omni, PhD, MPH, MLS is a two-time TEDx speaker, award-winning entrepreneur, and Black Joy scholar, artist, and activist. She is affectionately known as the Health Hippie in some circles and the Green Goddess of Black Joy in other circles. No matter the term, Dr. Omni is the go-to-source for creative and compassionate conversations that lead to community change.
Her research explores nature’s influence on the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being of Black people. By blending her 25-year background in public health with her foreground in art education, her presentations provide a counter narrative to the typical deficit lens generally applied to the Black experience.
Vince is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow in the department of English (Creative Writing) at Florida State University. His area of concentration is African-American Literary and Cultural Studies, with a focus on adapting fiction written by writers of the African diaspora for film and television. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kansas and a BA in English from Saint Olaf College (Northfield, MN). He is a 2023 Kimbilio Fellow, a 2022 HurstonWright Fellow, and winner of the 2019 Margaret Walker Memorial Prize in Fiction.
Jamie Barnes
Differently Bodied Beings and Ethnographic Encounters: Act two
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
Resisting Cultural Narrative Entrapment
Alec Grant
Born in Scotland in 1952, my major troubling lived experience since then is of being narratively entrapped by a range of oppressive powerful cultures, forces, people, institutions, and organisations. I’ve written about this in my single- and co-authored autoethnographic and related writing over nearly 30 years, doing this work to try to untrap myself and others. In my spare time (ha ha), I’m a painter, a fiddle player, nice and nasty in equal measure, and a good friend to many. In terms of my embodied scholarly work, I seem to be ripening just as I’m starting to rot. Ah well!
Alec is Visiting Professor, University of Bolton and recipient of the inaugural ICAE Lifetime Contribution Award presented by Trude Klevan, who describes his contribution to the field.
Workshop
The focus of this workshop will be on advancing autoethnography through resisting cultural narrative entrapment. It will build on concepts, ideas, and standpoint positions which were first articulated in the Routledge volume I edited in 2024 – Writing Philosophical Autoethnography, which I’m developing on the basis of my current work.
What you can expect: At least a week before the workshop, I will send everyone the following brief (2-3 page) pieces: Culture and Cultural Identity; Cultural Narrative Compliance and Entrapment; Cultural Silencing; Critical Autoethnographicity.
For the workshop to be a success, it’s essential that you read all the pieces before the 21st of July.
When we get together online at the start of the workshop, we’ll discuss each piece in turn as a large group, for about 15 minutes. I’ll then ask each of you to spend 10 minutes thinking and writing about how you might use emerging ideas in your own work. We’ll use the last 20 minutes of the workshop in a large group discussion, where delegates who would like to, can share challenges, blocks and ideas for developing these concepts.
If you enjoyed my previous ICAE workshops in this area, please come again, and if you didn’t attend those give this one a try!