Historically, self-reflective work has been disparaged as narcissistic or uncritical. In this blog post, I outline two ways, drawn from my own research and practice, in which starting from an auto/biographical perspective can promote inclusive and transformative pedagogies and enable impactful research through connecting the individual with the social. Underpinning these activities, and indeed integrating them, is the conviction that distinctions between theory and practice, work and the self, art and life, are illusory and tenuous (Fournier, 2022). Linking our individual stories to narratives of wider social purpose can be a catalyst for change.

Inclusive pedagogy through a multimodal approach

Doctoral research can be a lonely, anxiety-provoking process. While maintaining a reflexive stance is widely seen as essential, navigating researcher positionality can be rife with tensions and dilemmas (Czerniawski, 2023). The emotional labour involved is not always factored into doctoral training (Calabria et al., 2023). BERA guidelines (2024) include a short section on responsibilities for researchers’ wellbeing, however, educational research may not be ‘as far down the road’ (Sikes & Hall, 2019) in this respect as other disciplines. In an attempt to acknowledge these illusory boundaries between work and self, I, along with Kamal Badhey, Carmen Woodroofe and Yvonne Canham-Spence, organised an AHRC-funded doctoral symposium: ‘Multimodal Approaches to Life Writing and Life stories’. Grounded in an ethics of care, we sought to explore under-recognised ways of knowing, and to build community among researchers and practitioners by bringing together their creative outputs through the creation of a zine. Drawing on auto/biography, creative writing, music, oral history and visual forms, we were interested in exploring life writing/life stories in the broadest possible terms. Creating collaborative space to explore reflexivities of discomfort (Pillow, 2010) and the shifting identities that doctoral work can engender, may contribute to a more positive research culture: by considering the wider social structures and power relations in which researchers work, and by contesting the notion that research which privileges subjectivity is necessarily solipsistic.

Biography and history entwine

‘My research interests are deeply rooted in my own biography, highlighting the entanglement between self and other, between the personal and the sociopolitical.’

My own research (Hanrahan, 2023) has a strong auto/biographical impulse and adopts a life history approach to explore the lives of former nuns, one of whom is my mother. I cannot write myself out of this narrative. My mother’s story is nested within my story; work, life, self and other have become intertwined. As a researcher, I came to realise the significance of my mother’s story as part of a wider web of stories, highlighting the connectedness between biography and history, between private troubles and public issues (Mills, 2000). These former nuns, now in their eighties, belonged to a teaching congregation for several decades. Their narratives offer an insider perspective of life within the convent walls and help to complicate any simple binaries of good versus evil or agent versus victim when it comes to how we think of nuns. My research interests are therefore deeply rooted in my own biography, highlighting the entanglement between self and other, between the personal and the sociopolitical.

These two examples illustrate how an ‘auto’ approach is used to build community, develop reflexivity, and speak to wider discussions of social change and cultural memory. As Ruth Behar (1996, p. 14) reminds us: ‘a personal voice if creatively used, can lead the reader, not into miniature bubbles of navel-gazing, but into the enormous sea of serious social issues’.

References

Behar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Beacon Press.

Calabria, V., Harding, J. & Meiklejohn, L. (2023). Oral history in UK doctoral research: Extent of use and researcher preparedness for emotionally demanding work. The Oral History Review, 50(1), 82–102. https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2023.2175698

Czerniawski, G. (2023). Power, positionality and practitioner research: Schoolteachers’ experiences of professional doctorates in education. British Educational Research Journal, 49(6), 1372–1386. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3902

Fournier, L. (2022). Autotheory as feminist practice in art, writing, and criticism. MIT Press.

Hanrahan, K. (2023, May 26). ‘They just ignored my tears, they ignored my unhappiness’: Former Irish nuns reveal accounts of brainwashing and abuse. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/they-just-ignored-my-tears-they-ignored-my-unhappiness-former-irish-nuns-reveal-accounts-of-brainwashing-and-abuse-197569

Foucault, M. (1997). Ethics: Subjectivity and truth. New York Press.

Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.

Pillow, W. (2003). Confession, catharsis, or cure? Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(2), 175–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839032000060635

Sikes, S., & Hall, M. (2020). Too close for comfort?: Ethical considerations around safeguarding the emotional and mental wellbeing of researchers using auto/biographical approaches to investigate ‘sensitive’ topics. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 43(2), 163–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743727X.2019.1636025