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The ‘Dear Researcher’ workshop on participatory research spaces at the BERA 2024 conference: Insights and practical examples of researching with youth co-researchers

The ‘Dear Researcher’ workshop that I facilitated at the 2024 BERA Conference, had developed through years of research working alongside children and young people as co-researchers. The...

From compliance to conversation: New guidelines push for ethical reflection in research reporting

Artificial intelligence in educational research and practice

Academic outputs, conference and journal papers, are the primary mode of communication for academics, whether with other researchers, policymakers, or practitioners and the wider public. Scholarly...

Editorial: Beyond ‘navel gazing’: Autoethnography as a catalyst for change

Autoethnography holds significant relevance as a methodology in social justice work within educational research and practice (Boylorn, 2006; Ellis, 2002; Skousen, 2022). It is defined as a...

Beyond ‘navel gazing’: Autoethnography as a catalyst for change

In April and July of 2023, the BERA Social Justice special interest group (SIG) held an event titled ‘Beyond “Navel-gazing”: Autoethnography as a catalyst for change’. This event brought...

Narrating self, narrating us: Autoethnography in Black women’s storytelling

Telling stories has been part of my upbringing since birth. My Jamaican immigrant grandparents used stories to shape my identity, build character, and share their histories – stories of arriving...

Ripple effects: From the ‘auto’ to wider narratives of social purpose

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...

Autoethnography and stakeholder engagement

In this blog post I report on my Winston Churchill Foundation research fellowship study on the adultification of Black girls in state care in 2023 (Ikomi, 2024). Adultification can occur in a...

Beyond navel-gazing: Why is there a lack of Black male teachers in the United Kingdom?

‘Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferals of information.’―Paulo Freire In this blog post, I will share how autoethnography has shaped my doctoral research on...

Challenging the narrative: Auto-captioning and diversity in higher education speech recognition

In this blog post, I outline key findings from my autoethnographic study examining the ways auto-generated captioning technologies (such as Panopto) in higher education (HE) transcribe my...

Becoming a mature postgraduate researcher: Using autoethnography to stargaze

Do you believe that the stars can align to ensure you are in the right place at the right time? In spring 2023, I read a paper by Professor Pat Tissington on using autoethnography (Ellis et al.,...

The BERA–Sage Handbook of Research-Informed Education Practice and Policy

Out May 2025 – pre-order now from Sage RRP £295.00 The BERA-Sage Handbook of Research-Informed Education Practice and Policy, 2 Vol. offers an in-depth exploration of the ways in which...

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a cornerstone of research assessment in the UK, influencing funding, reputation and strategy across institutions. However, many researchers are still...