ICAE 2026 Workshops

Workshops provide pedagogical spaces for both formal and informal education and conversation and have become an important way we build, nurture, support, develop and encourage our community.

This year, in association with the Sofia Centre for Creative Research, ICAE2026 are holding a festival of creative pre conference online workshops that include the following:

Creating poetry in research
From social science research to a life giving practice
Monday July 6th & Tuesday 7th July 2026
10am – 2:30pm (BST) 5am (EDT) 6pm (JST)

Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968-1972, believed that poetry can create a bridge from what we know over to the unknown, very much like an explorer going on an voyage. Such expeditions, he suggested, bring to light those dimensions of life and experience that science doesn’t represent or understand well, such as our feelings and imagination. Likewise, US Poet Laureate Billy Collins, believed poetry chronicles and accounts for the human heart, again, something difficult to document and understand through traditional social science methods.

As researchers, many of us take seriously a belief that there are limits to what science can know or measure and that inevitably important “stuff” will be omitted from research. In part, this is because we don’t know how to include it, and in part this relates to the methods we use. As Elliot Eisner reminds us “form and content are inseparable” we know by the form we use, and we are thus limited by the form we use.

These facts, or challenges, form the backdrop to this workshop. If, the form/methods we use to conduct research limits what we can know – are we not duty bound to adopt alternative approaches to add, compliment and expand what we have learned during a research project.

Poetry provides one alternative form of knowing, that Day-Lewis, Collins and many, many before them, believed provide a medium to understand and communicate what can be difficult or impossible via other means, and thus provides a compelling rationale to explore the benefits of poetry (in all is forms) in our research.

This workshop supports delegates to explore:

• Some advantages of communicating research through poetry,
• How poetry is being used and developed by researchers in Health, Medicine, Nursing, Sport and Exercise Science, Pharmacology, Psychology and Sociology (to name a few) with examples from commissioned published research
• Ideas for present poetry within a social science doctoral thesis
• Ideas for how and where to publish and communicate research poetry
• Experiment with different styles of poetry, and different approaches to creating poetry
• Sessions include poetry from transcript, poetry from stories, poetry from autoethnography, poetry from field work, messy texts, performance poetry, collaborative poetry, using poetry during data collection and co-created research designs, and poetry to support mental health and communicate the unsaid
• Explore different traditions [from Haiku to Sonnets] -and to understand and experiment developing these as a way to develop poetic writing skills

To register please complete the registration form available by navigating the headings above, by selecting the following link to download a registration form https://boomerang-project.org.uk/registration/ or visiting our sister web site the Sofia Centre for Creative Research or for questions and additional information please contact our administrator Nadia at admin2@boomerang-project.org.uk

Wednesday 8th July Autoethnography and ethics: questions and consideration in the round with Djenane Ramalho-de-Oliveira, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil, timings are 5pm-8pm (BST) 5am-8am (JST) 1pm-5pm (USA/Brazil). The workshop provides an opportunity for delegates to bring your ethical challenges questions, and develop strategies and idea to negotiate them. To register please complete the registration form available by navigating the headings above, by selecting the following link to download a registration form https://boomerang-project.org.uk/registration/ or visiting our sister web site the Sofia Centre for Creative Research or for questions and additional information please contact our administrator Nadia at admin2@boomerang-project.org.uk

Thursday 9th July: Introduction to Autoethnography, reflective practice, reflexivity and putting the researcher in the frame.  Kitrina Douglas, University of West London, David Carless, University of the West of Scotland To register please complete the registration form available by navigating the headings above, by selecting the following link to download a registration form https://boomerang-project.org.uk/registration/ or visiting our sister web site the Sofia Centre for Creative Research or for questions and additional information please contact our administrator Nadia at admin2@boomerang-project.org.uk

Friday 10th July: Staying safe and protecting your mental health (while negotiating emotional traumas and vulnerabilities (5-8pm) Special Guest Elyse Pineau, Southern Illinois University, USA To register please complete the registration form available by navigating the headings above, by selecting the following link to download a registration form https://boomerang-project.org.uk/registration/ or visiting our sister web site the Sofia Centre for Creative Research or for questions and additional information please contact our administrator Nadia at admin2@boomerang-project.org.uk

Saturday 11th July “Haunting, autoethnography and critical family histories” with Esther Fitzpatrick, University of Auckland, New Zealand To register please complete the registration form available by navigating the headings above, by selecting the following link to download a registration form https://boomerang-project.org.uk/registration/ or visiting our sister web site the Sofia Centre for Creative Research or for questions and additional information please contact our administrator Nadia at admin2@boomerang-project.org.uk