Conference Agenda

Each paper in this panel considers the affective and relational significance of history – both personal and collective. There is no shortage of cliched adages about the significance of history. Cliché for a reason, the words of George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," and Napoleon Bonaparte, "History is a set of lies agreed upon," seem to land differently now than they once did. When we think of the “challenging times” evoked in this year’s theme, we as American scholars, and we as individuals with diverse global connections are facing, these often-repeated phrases take on a meaning that seems less cliched and, somehow, more ominous. How does one go about remembering the past, and learning from it? How might this endeavor change us, and those we encounter, for the better? The papers in this session each confront history is a different way. The spectral residue of dark truths that must be confronted to be driven out, the marks that our personal histories leave upon us that guide us, sometimes with out our consent, that must be understood before they can be woven into our becomings, the ways in which distortions of history may be coopted and leveraged to the benefit of some, and detriment of others, and the ways in which embodying memories can connect history to present, are all explored in this panel. History, in one way or another, connects us all. The goal of this panel is to consider the ways in which, collectively, our confrontations of history allow us to imagine collaborative futures where the past is not something that we confront, but something that we embrace.

Each of the presenters are serving in the role of department chair, programme director, dean, or associate provost. We each spent years teaching and leading in qualitative research programs. Our collective scholarship is rooted in philosophies and theories that embrace situational, political, and ethical demands of relationships. Yet, as we moved from faculty roles into leadership roles, we found ourselves thinking about how to embody and lead with philosophical concepts that for years led our research/teaching practices. We offer four papers that question current discourses on higher education leadership, demonstrating the struggles we have in embodying and enacting relational philosophical concepts. These papers are rooted in the empirical, the everyday decisions, actions, and policy implementations we make as campus leaders.

We found ourselves looking for books on being a leader in higher education. What we found were advice literature on conflict management, survival guides, and recommended best practices. These approaches are rooted in humanist logics of the individual leader that allow for binary thought of administrator vs. faculty or leaders vs. followers. However, we were deep in living, teaching, and researching with philosophies that resist binary logics and focus on the relational ways the world comes into being, moment-by-moment, in more-than-human ways. Theories and philosophical concepts are not simply for research studies but for everyday living.

Collectively, in response to the conference theme, the papers discuss the rapidly changing needs of institutions and examine how embodied, philosophical concepts offer new and expansive visions for academic leadership, especially in unprecedented times. Our examples are based in the micro-moments of leading or the leading practices of the everyday. This is significant to the field because micro-moments as leaders are what makes our institutions. Thus, exposing how philosophical concepts inform our everyday decisions is critical to the field.

Studies of educational ecologies are now so well established as to be commonplace (e.g., Author 1, 2017; Jackson, 1968; Thorne, 1993). It is certainly the case that educators note important lessons learned in their sociocultural roles as educators and it is equally common to note how students can and do educate one another. As educators and qualitative researchers, we understand the idea of being educated as an integral aspect of living and believe formal educational ecologies are a deeply significant, (more than) human right.

Yet, such studies of educational ecologies most often conceptualize young people in general, and young people of color in schooling in particular, as those in need of education. Drawing from two different longitudinal studies of young children in educational ecologies, this performative paper seeks to interrupt these studies to more directly consider the question: what does it mean for qualitative researchers to take children of color seriously as educators?

Although differing in context and purpose, our studies of sonically adaptive public play spaces and children’s use of songwriting to express academic content are parallel in their ethical commitments to young children, communities, and education with sounds. In thinking through our work individually and in conversation, it became clear that we, like many educators and those whose scholarship is with young people, understand children as educators. Yet, there are comparatively few qualitative studies of educational ecologies that center children as teachers and adults as students.

In similar fashion, in qualitative research, children are more often seen than heard. We mean this in a literal fashion: we read children’s words or watch them on videos where their actions are often secondary to their sounds. To these ends, this sonic scholarship (e.g., Bull & Cobussen, 2022) expresses important lessons from children-as-educators, providing an opportunity to truly listen and learn.

Arts education has become a focal point of interest across academic, practical, and political spheres. It is increasingly viewed as a vital context for experiencing, negotiating, and learning forms of creative coexistence, life orientation, and self-efficacy. In this light, questions surrounding resonance within and through cultural education have gained renewed urgency. In times characterized by growing uncertainty, heightened societal fears, threats to democratic cohesion under populist pressures, and the escalation of armed conflicts, there is a pressing need for spaces that promote creative expression, open dialogue, and cultural visibility.

In collaboration with a practice-based partner—an interdisciplinary production and performance venue in Leipzig—this project explores how spaces of resonance, both verbal and non-verbal, can be intentionally designed to invite participation, enable meaningful engagement, and support the exploration of diverse ways of creating and living together.

We ask: What makes spaces for experience and creativity resonate? How do such spaces influence participants, and in turn, how do they foster a sense of self-efficacy and belonging? How do they invite reflection on self-image, personal goals, and life circumstances? To explore these questions, we design and research various creative spaces, each centered on expression through language or sound. Through these low-threshold offerings, we seek to understand how personal creative narratives—both verbal and sonic—can generate spaces of resonance, thereby enabling new forms of expression, engagement, and negotiation.

To accompany the open and evolving process of spatial design, the research adopts a process-oriented, posthuman paradigm. This framework draws on participatory and (post)qualitative methodologies to examine how these creative environments emerge, transform, and invite participation beyond human-centered paradigms.

This paper presentation will explore a qualitative study of the utilization of havruta-style text study to read and analyze primary sources in a social studies/history methods course. This style of text study is rooted in a traditional Jewish style of textual learning, where men studied complex texts in the Yeshiva (Shulman, 2008). At the heart of havruta is partner text study, where dyads or triads of students closely read and examine a text. As part of this, partners corroborate, disagree, and question to delve deeply into the meaning of a text (Shargel, 2019). Our research goal was to: a) investigate preservice teachers’ understanding and interpretation of primary sources using havruta-style text study, b) examine preservice teachers’ willingness to use this method in the middle and secondary classroom, and c) consider how to apply this method to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Recently, educators have been experimenting with this style of text study in secular contexts. There have, however, been only a few studies that consider the impact of havruta in secular settings, such as English classes and first-year college seminars (Shargel, 2019; Wright, Bergom, & Brooks, 2011). To date, there are no extant studies of preservice teachers in universities preparing for public education using havruta-style text study. Our qualitative study is based on three semesters of data collection with three groups of preservice secondary social studies/history teachers, where we took fieldnotes, conducted debriefs after each havruta session, and did a final focus group interview at the end of each semester. We used thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to code the data.Our research aims to add to the repertoire of havruta instruction by creating new knowledge of using this method for preservice teachers in public education.

The paper examines how the scientific and professional foundations of education can be reimagined phenomenologically through the reversible relation between perception and world. Educational science offers both general and specific concepts that address the lived problems and possibilities of teaching. Yet these terms often acquire meanings within institutional contexts that exclude the very experiences they aim to describe. Institutional discourses, dominated by nominalization, tend to dissolve the intimacy between word and experience (Nilsen, 2021).

Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s later writings on language, visibility, and the flesh, teachers’ professional language emerges as an effort to restore contact between the linguistic shell and the lived gesture, allowing speech to pervade speech in a porous renewal of expression (Kaushik, 2025).

As professional practices mimic the methods and attitudes of science, they risk falling into the same pitfalls that Merleau-Ponty cautions against, unless they remain thoughtful of their origin in lived experience. Seen in this light, professional language and communication are reconsidered not as systems of control, but as movements within a field of reversibility where expression loosens articulation and exposes the fragile juncture of body and world, thought and gesture.

From this view, ethics emerges through exposure, excess, and reversibility, modes of unsettling the professional that transform authority into responsiveness. Such modes open a space where teaching and research become practices of contact rather than mastery, grounded in the risk and ambiguity of a shared thought’s body (1968).

Kaushik, R. (2025). The problem of speech in Merleau-Ponty. Philosophies, 10(3), 50. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies10030050

Nilsen, A. C. E. (2021). Professional talk: Unpacking professional language. In P. Luken (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of institutional ethnography (pp. 359–374). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54222-0_25

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible: Followed by working notes. Northwestern University Press.

What I explore in this paper is what might unfold through playful and speculative dialogues with the haunting and absences of early childhood education (ECE). By using ideas from hauntology (Derrida 2006), I think-with possible future(s) by looking at what is making itself known as an absent-presence. For educational research, hauntology can provide tools for considering how the past might be at work as hidden silences and absences. With the figuration of data-ghost(s) I think with what lingers, troubles or is silent as hauntings. As a fluid methodological move, I create data-ghost(s) with artwork to speak of, to and with the ghostly. With such ghostly presences, I attend to what went unnoticed or was ignored. By re-turning to pedagogical documentation practices with imagery and narratives of learning events, I slow down and linger with events I had not paid attention to before to notice what has been absented but still having an influence. With data-ghost(s), I make greedy magpie-like borrowing from arts-based research practices to consider theory, speculation and research work in relation. Speculating with absences leaves space for otherwise possible future(s) to unfold with hauntological imaginaries in-between liminalities of past-present-future(s). I do this by first attending to what interrupts and re-turns in dialogue with the words of Derrida. Then I use data-ghost(s) creations by imagining digital artworks as an absent-presence. With these data-ghost(s) I imagine possible future(s) involving teacher education. But speculating with the ghostly invites attention to documentation’s own desirings and dialogues that silently go on in-between past-present-future(s). What I propose is that hauntings trouble and generate speculative openings. Such spaces bring attention to what is missing from documentation along with possible future(s) for practice and research. But what haunts is an unreliable kind of data where documentation itself might reveal its own wants and desires.

This presentation considers debates and tensions surrounding differing views of qualitative research, critical posthumanism, and post-qualitative inquiry (PQI). More particularly, it focuses on the issue of incommensurability between qualitative research and PQI, as well as the tensions regarding method and methodology.

The issue of incommensurability refers to the idea that systems of thought or frameworks are so fundamentally different that they cannot be reconciled. This is the main argument promoted by St Pierre (2024) regarding conventional humanist qualitative methodology and post-qualitative inquiry, as they are premised on different ontological and epistemological foundations. We are for the most part, in agreement with this, but with some clarifications that we discuss in our presentation.

The second broad issue we focus on in relation to the differing views of qualitative research and post-qualitative inquiry is the differences between the understandings of method and methodology. Traditional qualitative methods, which rely on structured or semi-structured data collection and analysis techniques (e.g., coding and thematic analysis), may not align well with the fluid, emergent, and often nonlinear approaches of PQI. PQI, which is rooted in poststructuralism and posthumanism, can include the use of art, developing propositions, diffraction, figuration, cartography, walking methodologies, stitching, swimming methodologies, reading, writing and other nontraditional forms of inquiry that go beyond data representation. Whether these are called methods or methodology, however, or different ways of doing inquiry, is a matter of opinion In the presentation, we give some examples of different conceptions of methods and methodology, primarily through examining those writers who are sympathetic to critical posthumanism, feminist new materialism, PQI, and non-representational theory (NRT). Although in some cases, methods and methodology are eschewed, in others like NRT, the methods but not the methodology are eschewed, and in other cases, the process of research is what produces the knowledge.

This paper examines the rapidly growing body of educational research influenced by posthumanist philosophies. Posthumanist philosophies refuse the binary of direct realism and social constructionism, both of which center a humanist spectator subject as the sole agent of meaning making. Instead posthumanist empiricism regards objects of study as active participants in inquiries and the world’s ongoing metaphysical becoming. Understood in this way, social inquiry is a process through which some knowing subjects, communities of human and more-than-human agents, and possibilities for action come into being while others do not. In other words, empirical research is not just a revealing of the world from a transcendent perspective, but is an immanent doing in and with the world.

The paper is a collaborative review of over three hundred articles, book chapters, and books that apply posthumanist philosophies to the practice of educational research. The review was 3 years in the making and has recently been published in the annual AERA publication, the Review of Research in Education. It was broadly inclusive and included educational research influenced by European continental and Anglo-American philosophers most often associated with the term “posthumanism. It also included research influenced by Indigenous philosophies and Black studies scholarship that critique Western humanism and call for a more ethically and politically visionary practice of social analysis.

This paper provides a concept driven review of a rapidly growing and diverse literature in the field of education organized around the theme of ethical and political responsibility. It reviews four genres of posthumanist inquiry: assemblage studies, cartographic studies, diffractive studies, and place-based research. The paper concludes with an examination of three different conceptions of possibility and futurity that inform posthumanist reconceptualizations of research responsibility. A website with a full bibliography of the 300 articles reviewed and other supplementary materials will be made available.

Culturally sensitive qualitative research in the Global South is essential for producing ethical, relevant, and inclusive knowledge. The Global South—encompassing regions in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and other parts of the world—presents unique socio-cultural, historical, and political contexts that differ significantly from those in the Global North. These regions often grapple with the legacies of colonialism, under-resourced institutions, and diverse epistemologies. As such, applying Westernised research frameworks without adaptation can lead to misrepresentation and marginalization of local voices.

To address this, researchers are encouraged to adopt culturally sensitive approaches that prioritize local knowledge systems and community engagement. Key strategies include transdisciplinary collaboration, where researchers work alongside community members, policymakers, and practitioners to co-create knowledge. Participatory and decolonial methods—such as narrative inquiry, ethnography, and indigenous methodologies—help center the lived experiences of participants and challenge dominant paradigms.

Cultural competence is another critical component. Researchers must invest time in understanding the cultural norms, values, and communication styles of the communities they study. This includes avoiding assumptions, using appropriate language, and engaging local partners or interpreters to ensure accurate and respectful representation.

Despite these efforts, several challenges persist. Power imbalances between Global North and South institutions can skew research agendas and funding priorities. Language barriers and differing worldviews can also hinder mutual understanding and collaboration.

Moving forward, the field must prioritize equitable partnerships, support locally led research initiatives, and advocate for inclusive publication practices that amplify Global South scholarship. By doing so, qualitative research can become a more powerful tool for social justice, policy development, and community empowerment across diverse global contexts.

Drawing on my experience as a qualitative mental health researcher in Ghana, this presentation explores practical strategies for embedding cultural sensitivity into research design and implementation—ensuring that cultural contexts are not peripheral but central to the research process.

This study aims to explore a qualitative research method that delves deeply into interviewees’ perspectives while retaining their voices. In traditional narrative inquiry (NI), Clandinin and Connelly (2000) emphasize the importance of lived experience and propose restorying to reconstruct texts into coherent narratives, thereby analyzing the form and meaning of experience. McCormack (2004) further developed storytelling as a method to capture the interpretive complexity of participant narratives. Reflective thematic analysis (RTA), as outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006, 2021), enables systematic and in-depth exploration of participants’ accounts. Overall, NI excels at listening to and preserving participants’ voices but provides limited depth in analyzing content, whereas RTA allows for detailed examination and cross-case comparison but can be less efficient with large-scale data.

This study explores how storytelling can function as a pre-analytic tool to organize and manage large-scale narrative data, and examines how the integration of storying with reflective thematic analysis influences both participant engagement and the depth of analytic insights.

To address these aims, this paper introduces a hybrid strategy for managing extensive narrative interview data. To reduce information clutter, participants’ narratives were first organized into concise stories, facilitating the identification of key insights and the construction of causal connections. Recognizing that this integration inevitably reflects researcher subjectivity, the stories were subsequently returned to participants for verification through member checking (Birt et al., 2016).

This approach offers both methodological and ethical advantages. Beyond serving as an analytic bridge between transcripts and thematic analysis, the storytelling process fostered narrative motivation: participants were more willing to share sensitive experiences, particularly concerning mental health, when assured their narratives would be respectfully crafted. This study thus demonstrates how storytelling can enhance participant engagement while enabling effective analysis of large-scale narrative data, providing an innovative contribution to qualitative methodology.

This paper explores the persistent rejection of qualitative research in Training and Development (T&D) journals, arguing that these rejections often stem from the enduring, yet anachronistic, influence of positivist assumptions. Drawing on Derrida’s concept of hauntology and the pervasive nature of neoliberal audit culture, I contend that the “ghost of positivism” continues to dictate what counts as legitimate evidence, even in studies designed to explore lived experience and situated learning. This phenomenon is particularly acute in T&D, where evaluation frameworks like Kirkpatrick’s levels and the emphasis on psychometric instruments have fostered an environment where calculability is equated with credibility.

Through an analysis of reviewer comments on my own rejected qualitative manuscripts, I illustrate how demands for psychometric validity, large sample sizes, quantification of qualitative data, and replicability fundamentally misinterpret the ontological and epistemological foundations of interpretive inquiry. These demands, while appearing as technical advice, are shown to be ontological impositions that force phenomena to fit pre-existing measures, thereby thinning rich human change into quantifiable proxies.

I propose a “counter-haunting” approach, advocating for an aesthetic of quality grounded in qualitative rigor. This includes explicitly stating a constructivist/interpretivist paradigm, prioritizing trustworthiness (credibility, dependability, confirmability) over psychometric reliability, justifying sample sufficiency through information power, and demonstrating practical illumination through design principles and rich exemplars. The paper argues that changing this dynamic requires a collective effort from authors, editors, reviewers, and practitioners to protect methodological plurality and recognize diverse forms of evidence, ensuring that what truly matters in T&D is not overshadowed by what can merely be counted.

How can we help graduate students think like qualitative researchers? And how do we best engage graduate students in conducting their first qualitative study? Drawing from my experience teaching a qualitative research seminar at a US university, I’ve noticed that many students struggle with conceptual skills --such as configuring their interviews to effectively address their research questions. In this presentation, I will share some of the strategies I use to help students step into the mindset of a qualitative researcher. I will describe creative ways to engage students in data collection and analysis. In particular, I will highlight my approach of pairing students to collaborate throughout the semester, both in and outside of class. I invite you to engage in a lively discussion about teaching qualitative research, especially in the context of rapidly evolving AI technologies.

Qualitative research in sensitive fields such as bereavement, trauma, and culpability requires more than formal adherence to institutional ethical protocols. While informed consent and confidentiality remain essential, they do not capture the lived, moment-to-moment ethical negotiations that researchers encounter in practice. This has been described as ethics-in-practice — the ongoing, situated process of balancing care, responsibility, and reflexivity in research encounters.

Our Dream Team session takes up this challenge within an ongoing study on the experiences of individuals who have unintentionally caused another person’s death, either a stranger (e.g., through accidental traffic fatalities) or a close relation (e.g., children who died under parental supervision). The project is carried out by senior researchers and several research assistants who conduct in-depth interviews. This team composition sheds light on an underexplored dimension: how diverse researcher subjectivities, across career stages and personal backgrounds, shape not only the emotional experience of fieldwork but also the ethical dynamics within the team. Whereas much of the literature frames research assistants mainly in relation to power hierarchies, here we ask how shared vulnerability, ambivalence, and reflexivity circulate within the team and reconfigure ethical practice.

From the very start of fieldwork, our team encountered ambivalence: moments of deep empathy intertwined with fear, judgment, or withdrawal; the pull of closeness followed by the need for distance; the recognition that working with such material is simultaneously a privilege and a burden. Crucially, these experiences did not remain confined to interviews with participants. They reverberated within the team itself, where assistants and senior researchers grappled together with questions of proximity and distance, of supporting participants while also protecting one another, and of making sense of ethically charged encounters.

The guiding questions of this session are: How do ambivalence and reflexivity emerge in team dynamics in sensitive qualitative research? How can these processes be acknowledged and held, rather than suppressed? And what structures or practices (such as debriefing, supervision, or collaborative reflexivity) can best support researchers at different stages in coping with the emotional and ethical demands of such work?

The Dream Team format offers a unique opportunity to explore these issues collectively. In our session, senior researchers and research assistants will share short reflexive accounts of the challenges they encountered, followed by small-group discussions where participants consider parallel dilemmas from their own projects. Groups will be invited to propose tentative guidelines for fostering ethics-in-practice within research teams. These provisional guidelines will be gathered and synthesized, with the possibility of continuing the dialogue in a writing collective after the congress.

By situating ethics-in-practice not only in the researcher–participant relationship but also in the collaborative life of research teams, this session advances methodological reflection in two ways. First, it underscores that ethical deliberation in sensitive inquiry must include the dynamics among researchers themselves. Second, it highlights ambivalence as an inherent and potentially productive feature of qualitative work, one that can deepen reflexivity and open new ways of thinking about responsibility in research.

In 2021, we, a group of then early-career literacy scholars of color collectively known as the Literacy Futurisms Collective-In-the-Making, put forth a conceptual framework, literacy futurisms, consisting of a constellation of five interrelated concepts: the ancestral/collectivist, playful/imaginative, intersectional, translingual, and decolonial (The Literacy Futurisms Collective-in-the-Making, 2021). Through our work, we sought to invite scholars to metaphorically dialogue with us around a series of provocations aimed at re-envisioning and re-claiming the future(s) of literacy and educational research.

Our goal now is to re-gather, with some of us joining in person and others virtually, 1) to invite an international community of scholars to engage with us around the original provocations we set in motion in 2021; and 2) to reflect on if and how our own praxis has shifted in the current sociopolitical climate we are encountering as scholars of color in the U.S. To that end, we frame this session presentation around the following overarching questions, which we will invite the larger community to reflect on alongside us: 1) How can we reimage literacy and educational research for the future in a world where white supremacist domestic terrorism is normalized? and 2) What stories, counter-narratives, and testimonios do we and our communities share surrounding experiences of increased and unwarranted violence, surveillance, and criminalization? The goals and the questions we seek to explore in community with other ECQU attendees are grounded in our firm belief that knowledge production through collectivity disrupts the coloniality (Smith, 2012; Patel, 2016) and neoliberal precepts of the academy (DeRocher, 2018), and it is in the dislocation of “the academy” that we might start to unravel and learn from the decolonial ways of being and doing that have sustained us to this present moment.

We draw inspiration from the work of collectives that have come before us such as the Black Girls' Literacies Collective (Haddix, McArthur, Muhammad, Price-Dennis & Sealey-Ruiz, 2016) and the Fugitive Literacies Collective (Player, Coles, Ybarra, 2020) that are reclaiming literacy and literacy education for BIPOC communities. For us, transforming traditional literacy and educational research spaces into those that center and celebrate BIPOC practices and knowledge(s) is a form of reclamation and of resistance to coloniality; it is about creating space where we can lift our histories, identities, and each other. As such, we continue building our conceptualization of literacy into one that refutes narrow, traditional, and prescriptive literacies for the privileged, and is deeply-rooted in an ancestral/collectivist, playful/imaginative, intersectional, translingual, and decolonial collective vision of literacy for and by BIPOC–Literacy Futurisms (The Literacy Futurisms Collective-in-the-Making, 2021). We ground this shared vision in notions of authentic cariño (Abril-Gonzalez, 2020; Bartolomé, 2008; Curry, 2016) and radical love (Freire, 1998; hooks, 2000) for one another, and embrace the nature of interdependence (Campano et al, 2020) and communal being (Rusoja, 2017) extending beyond the goals of the individual into a collective well-being.

In this session, we seek collective uplifting by engaging in critical praxis (Freire, 1970) in accordance with our coloniality- and neoliberalism-resisting vision. We will begin by highlighting and celebrating the scholarship of BIPOC scholars whose work embodies, shapes and materializes the meaning of Literacy Futurisms since even before our collective theorization. Then, we will facilitate shared dialogue and co-creation among “presenters,” “discussants,” and “audience members” to collectively envision and “illuminate on the future” (Toliver et al., 2019, p. 68) by inviting others to be in community with our collective, grappling with what literacy could be across time and space and to join us in a revisiting of our Literacy Futurisms provocations. The session will include various multilingual and multimodal points of entry (e.g., art, poetry, writing, drawing) to invite everyone in the session to play, dream, and theorize alongside us as co-conspirators (Love, 2019) as we imagine the “different tomorrows [that] are possible” (Freire, 1998/2007, p. 55) for literacy and educational research.

As we wrote in 2021, “we are everything we hope academia to be: collective, not competitive, and drawn together from a place of love, joy, hope, and humanity” (p. 5). Now, as more advanced scholars, we welcome the opportunity to invite the ICQE community “to open your minds, hearts, and spirits” and to join us in “collectively reclaim[ing] potential futures of [educational] research” (p. 5) alongside us.

In our final year of doctorates in systemic practice, we are challenging ourselves to find ways through colonisations of land, aging, health and bodily communication. We explore the complex, multidimentional, relational flows that move across bodies, land and institutions. In writing up we hold on to systemic, diffractive, polyphonic, exploratory constellations, evolutions of liminality, to find hope in collaborating in peripheral, inbetween spaces, in an uncertain world in flux.

Dementia is a growing global health issue, affecting not only those diagnosed but also their close environment, particularly family members who take on caring responsibilities. Literature highlights the disproportionate burden placed on women caregivers, underlining the need for in-depth study of this phenomenon. The present study aims to explore the experiences of women caring for people with dementia within the Greek sociocultural context, focusing on the difficulties they face, the strategies they adopt, and the psychological mechanisms they use to cope. The study is grounded in the phenomenological paradigm, seeking to highlight the subjective experience as it is lived and given meaning by the participants themselves. The participants were 12 women caregivers of different ages and social characteristics from three major Greek cities, who care for or have cared for relatives with dementia in the past. Data were produced through semi-structured interviews that integrated appreciative inquiry activities and multimodal methods, such as photo-elicitation and projective cards, which contributed to the emergence of personally meaningful multimodal narratives. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used, through which common themes were identified regarding the practical and emotional challenges of caregiving, its impact on relationships and roles, fears and existential concerns, loss management, and personal sources of meaning and resilience. Caregiving was found to be an experience accompanied by a wide range of emotions, where anger, guilt, and frustration coexist with love, hope, and acts of self-care. The study concludes that caring for people with dementia is a complex and multidimensional experience, going beyond the practical aspects. As such, it requires greater recognition and support at both social and institutional levels, particularly in relation to the psychosocial support of caregivers.

This study examines romantic relationships during the period of emerging adulthood, with a particular focus on Southern European countries, specifically Greece, Italy, and Spain. Adopting a qualitative, phenomenological, and interpretative approach, it seeks to explore the lived experiences of romantic relationships within the broader sociocultural environment that shapes them. The research addresses a significant gap in the existing literature concerning romantic relationships in Southern Europe, particularly the impact of prolonged co-residence with family on relational development and autonomy. The study is grounded in Arnett’s theory of emerging adulthood, as well as the developmental frameworks proposed by Shuman & Connolly and Hochberg & Konner. Data were produced through multimodal interviews with 11 participants aged 18 to 24. The interview design integrated narrative, visual, and appreciative inquiry techniques. Thematic Analysis was employed using the QualCoder QDA software, through which five central themes were identified. The findings indicate that early cultural narratives contribute to the formation of idealized expectations regarding romantic relationships, which gradually evolve into more realistic conceptions over time. Participants demonstrated an ambivalent orientation toward love, intimacy, and commitment, reflecting a tension between the longing for deep emotional connection and the desire to maintain personal freedom. Within this context, technology plays a dual role, facilitating communication and connection while also enabling controlling and intrusive behaviors. Finally, family involvement was found to delay the process of individuation and restrict the exploration of sexuality. Within this context, technology serves a dual role, facilitating communication and connection while enabling controlling and intrusive behaviors. Finally, family involvement was found to delay the process of individuation and restrict the exploration of sexuality. Overall, this study adopts an intercultural approach, emphasizing the dynamic interplay between cultural norms, family structures, and individual experiences in shaping the meaning and expression of romantic relationships among emerging adults in Southern Europe.

Background: Refugee experiences are often examined through a pathogenic lens that prioritizes risk, disorder, and deficit. However, complementary evidence shows notable resilience among forcibly displaced people.

Purpose: To explore how young refugees living in a CCAC in Greece experience daily stressors and the ways they cope and strengthen resilience, in order to inform Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) services.

Methods: Nine male refugees aged 18–24 participated in three mini focus groups, each organised by native language (Arabic, French, and Farsi). A thematic analysis was conducted through a salutogenic lens, attending to how experiences and behaviours relate to Sense of Coherence (SOC) and Generalised Resistance Resources (GRRs).

Results: Three main themes emerged, each with subthemes. “Refugee experiences” encompassed (a) traumatic migration trajectories—exposure to war, violence, loss, and perilous journeys—and (b) post-migration powerlessness within the CCAC, marked by uncertainty, restricted freedom, hostility, discrimination, bureaucratic barriers, and unmet needs. “Psychological processes” included (a) negative emotions (fear, anxiety, grief), (b) dysfunctional reactions (psychophysiological disturbances, risk behaviours), and (c) coping strategies grouped into six modes: emotion regulation, meaning-making, self-denial, self-enhancement, seeking support, and avoidant distraction. “Social support” comprised (a) community shared values (solidarity, mutual respect, collective action) and (b) a sense of belonging (attachment, group identity), which function as GRRs that strengthen SOC. The findings are organised and presented via a thematic map that illustrates how these factors interact to enhance refugee well-being.

Conclusions: MHPSS interventions that prioritise peer-led support, brief skills training, everyday resilience activities, and dignity- and rights-based operations can translate a salutogenic approach into measurable gains in refugee mental health.

Background: Since 2021, Greece has operated Closed Controlled Access Centres (CCACs) on North Aegean and Dodecanese islands to accommodate refugees arriving by sea. While the mental health harms of residing in such places are well documented, far less is known about the everyday factors that foster resilience and protect mental health within these restrictive settings.

Purpose: To identify resilience-enhancing factors among adult refugees residing in a CCAC.

Methods: A photovoice approach was employed to elicit participants’ lived experiences. Nine asylum seekers from Palestine and Sierra Leone residing in the CCAC produced photographs depicting what supported their resilience, wrote captions, and engaged in facilitated group dialogues. The data comprised images, captions, and discussion transcripts. Thematic analysis was conducted collaboratively by participants and researchers to enhance credibility and interpretive depth.

Results: Three interrelated themes emerged. The first concerned “Values”, encompassing both personal elements such as faith, hope, and self-respect, and interpersonal elements such as dignity, solidarity, and reciprocity. The second centered on “Actions”, highlighting the role of social support (peers, trusted staff, community groups), self-activation (setting goals, building routines, helping others), and capacities (skills, problem-solving, language learning). The third theme captured “Existential Connections” to nature, spirituality, and memories of home, which provided meaning, continuity, and calm.

Conclusions: Participatory meaning-making enabled participants to articulate the assets and needs that shape their daily mental health, with immediate empowering effects. The study highlights actionable, camp-feasible measures for strengthening resilience: peer-led support, structured activities that build agency and skills, and protected spaces for dignity, faith, and contact with nature. These insights can guide quality improvements in CCAC living conditions and inform policy and programme design for mental health and psychosocial support in similarly constrained humanitarian contexts.

A coherent disability identity is considered a key factor in facilitating psychological adjustment to acquired disability, particularly in the context of social stressors and daily functional demands. The present qualitative study explored experiences of people who use prosthetic devices after low limp amputation. The sample was purposeful and comprised of twelve men who participated in individual interviews, consisting of questions framed in an open way to explore their lived experience. The research data was analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and produced six group experiential themes (superordinate themes) namely 1) the experience of amputation 2) the experience of prosthetics use 3) supportive factors during rehabilitation 4) barriers during rehabilitation 5) body image and prosthesis 6) self-awareness and identity integration. Participants reported that psychotherapy, physical activity, the arts, and community engagement not only provided significant support during rehabilitation but also served as empowering means for constructing a disabled identity. Prior to amputation, some participants had not been involved in sports or the arts. These domains helped them perceive their disabled bodies as capable and contributed to a positive redefinition of their new identity. Engaging with disability narratives allows rehabilitation psychologists to refine theoretical frameworks and develop empirically grounded approaches to understanding the psychosocial dimensions of identity reconstruction.

Music therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music to achieve individualized goals. Using music therapy in early childhood addresses social/emotional development, language and literacy, cognition, and perceptual motor and physical development. This study consisted of a series of investigations including clinical music therapy sessions collaborating with early childhood classroom over a period of time. This poster illustrates the process of how music therapy improved externalizing behaviors, internalizing behaviors, and adaptive skills. In addition to clinical practices, this poster also represents results from this study which concluded in professional development training courses addressing trauma-informed practices, holistic approaches to development, differentiated instruction, the use of verbal skills in working with early childhood, supporting early childhood with musical elements, and supporting early childhood with musical elements.

In the context of digital sociology (Nassehi, 2024), this paper examines how success of AI in schools depends on structures of expectation, linking this issue to broader debates on sociotechnical imaginaries (Taylor, 2004) understood as “collectively held and performed visions of desirable futures” (Jasanoff, 2015). These insights cannot provide predictions of development, but they do provide a picture of ideas that will be at play when establishing a new way of working in schools primarily through the decisions of the principals. This poster presents findings from the “BrAIn” project – Application of digital technologies based on artificial intelligence in education. Its aim is to examine how principals of public schools in Croatia conceptualize the role of artificial intelligence in transforming education. Drawing on findings from interviews with school principals (N = 22), the poster highlights key expectations, concerns, and opportunities voiced during the 2024/2025 school year in Croatian public primary and secondary schools. Principals mostly agree that artificial intelligence will certainly change education, primarily serving as an assistant, a tool that will enable the automation of administration and facilitate the creation of fully customized and individualized educational experiences through faster processing and availability of information. Nevertheless, AI will not be able to replace teachers, their human presence and emotions. In this regard, they however note that digital technology generally has reduced interpersonal contact in the school community, which needs to be addressed to preserve the key human and social component important especially for their leading of the collective.

The transition between preschool and primary school is often experienced as a complex period (Seabra-Santos et al., 2022), particularly for children with special educational needs (SEN) and their families. Indeed, this transition involves a shift between two environments and a relationship to space and materiality that is experienced differently by children, thereby altering their interactions. While the preschool setting tends to promote a more flexible environment—allowing children to move freely, choose their activities, and use adaptable materials—the entry into school often marks a rupture, where space becomes more structured, oriented toward academic learning, with controlled movements and fixed materials.

However, according to Freire’s (1974) critical pedagogy, the school space is not merely a physical environment but also a political place where different dynamics emerge. From this perspective, professionals (teachers, educators) are actively engaged in constructing the relationships between children, spaces, materials, and so on.

This poster will present a study on the transition experiences of eight four-year-old children with SEN. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, this research employed the mosaic approach to access children’s lived experiences (Clark & Moss, 2011). Eight sessions took place—four in preschool and four in school—following the same structure. During these sessions, the child and the researcher engaged in playful and creative activities (e.g., games, puppet play, microphone discussions/songs, guided environmental tours, photography, drawing, crafts, etc.). Each child created a transition book illustrating their experiences in preschool and school.

The poster will detail the creative and participatory methodology of this research and focus on one specific aspect of the results: children’s relationships with space and materials in preschool and school settings. We will discuss (1) the different relationships to space and materials in preschool and school, and (2) the importance of considering spatial and material dimensions as key components of the transition experience.

While parents’ aspirations and values are central to children’s developmental pathways, little is known about how they are expressed and enacted within contemporary Greek families. Our theoretical background is the narrative approach to therapy, a respectful, non-blaming approach to therapy and community work. A central metaphor of this approach is the distinction between the landscape of identity (what people find important, what they value) and the landscape of action (what they do, as an expression of the landscape of identity). In this study, we adapted these metaphors to parenting: The landscape of identity captures what parents find important for their children’s upbringing, and the landscape of action reflects how these values shape parenting practices. Our aim was to map the interplay of the two landscapes. Twenty Greek mothers of school-aged children participated in semi-structured interviews; their answers were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. We identified several key aspects of the landscape of identity, including well-being, schooling and future occupation, alongside aspects of the landscape of action, such as guiding, structuring opportunities and seeking help. Findings provide a broad view of the ways parents articulate values and enact them in daily parenting, highlighting connections between aspirations and practices.

Background: Facebook groups are everyday spaces of mutual support for people with mental health difficulties, yet the types of support exchanged and the conditions shaping participation are underdescribed.

Purpose: To explore how members of BPD-focused virtual communities interact, what kinds of support they seek, and how platform and group-context factors shape participation.

Methods: Written posts, visual materials, and comment-thread dialogues from two Greek language Facebook peer support groups that differed in structure and operation (one closed, one more open) were analysed using a netnographic approach and reflexive thematic analysis (RTA).

Results: Netnographic observations showed unstable engagement: some members joined, left, and later returned; active participation often declined when individuals reported feeling better. Stigma and privacy concerns—e.g., doubts about protection in “closed” settings and denial of diagnosis—produced many post views but few reactions and even fewer comments. Boundary tensions appeared (disagreements, intense dyadic attachments, exits as “overexposure”), and attempts to move to synchronous contact (e.g., Skype) stalled due to fear of exposure. In the more open group, mental health professionals were largely passive observers, and occasional participation by people with other diagnoses further blurred the group’s focus. RTA identified four main themes capturing the support ecology: (1) emotional and existential support (validation, encouragement, affirmation, meaning-making); (2) psychoeducational and coaching support (lay knowledge and lived experience about therapies, providers, medications, skills such as DBT strategies, grounding, problem-solving); (3) practical and socioeconomic support (signposting to benefits/services, everyday logistics); and (4) community cohesion, rules, and platform support (off-topic bonding, clarifying group rules, and technical/privacy issues).

Conclusions: Facebook peer groups can provide rapid validation, signposting, and skills microinterventions for people with BPD, but low active engagement, stigma-driven caution, and risk management gaps limit impact. Clear rules, graded participation pathways, crisis protocols, and stronger links to services may enhance benefits while mitigating harms.

I am employed as both researcher at the Center for Arts and Mental Health (CKMS), located at a Danish psychiatric facility in Copenhagen. My academic background is in philosophy and economics, and I have previously researched and participated in creative writing groups at the same facility.

I am developing an autoethnographic case study, based on a 15-week creative video art workshop at CKMS in late 2025, involving young adults (aged 25-35) with lived experience as psychiatric patients. My dual role as participating autoethnographic researcher and insider (as former user/patient) provides access to unique insights and shifting perspectives, but also raises ethical and epistemological tensions.

In the video art workshop sessions, I explore how to work creatively and intuitively with my hands and eyes. It feels like “falling into decisions” without calculating consequences, and each session brings a surprising sense of discovery. This uncertainty often leaves me in ethical dilemmas related to my research.

The main question I bring to ECQI is:

How can my experience become valuable and transparent as experiential background knowledge for ethically analyzing the video art workshop’s dynamics?

The poster explores this question through four thematic headlines and corresponding empirical examples:

1.How to keep a focus on group dynamics with the use of autoethnographic methods?

2.How does the reveal of a researcher as a ‘real’ person who shares videos and stories impact the group?

3.What and whose truth am I telling?

4.What ethical concerns arise about publishing from insider-as-researcher perspectives?

Contribution

This poster contributes to ongoing discussions about how insiders-as-researchers can engage ethically in qualitative inquiry. I reflect on concrete examples while exploring the potential of user perspectives to reshape psychiatric research discourses. Ideally, this leads to broader normative questions about integrity, access to knowledge production, and how lived experience can inform practical and political change.

Training in systemic psychotherapy is a dynamic process that influences the professional and personal development of trainees, especially when combined with work in public mental health settings and NGOs. This study explores the challenges, experiences, and perspectives of these professionals through a qualitative content analysis based on a focus group with eight participants (psychologists, psychiatrist resident, child and adolescent psychiatrists residents). Five key thematic areas emerged: the personal journey and the impact of the educational experience, the balance between training and professional identity, the application of systemic thinking in the workplace, the effects of the socio-economic context on Greece’s public mental health system, and the resilience and future prospects of professionals. The first results indicate that, despite institutional difficulties, understaffing, and psychological burden, trainees develop adaptive strategies, strengthening both their professional identity and resilience. While the study highlights the need for greater institutional support and better integration of systemic thinking into professional practice, it also acknowledges the importance of viewing trainees as embedded within systems from a relational perspective on emerging issues.

Self-advocacy refers to speaking up for oneself, expressing one’s needs, and defending one’s interests (Test et al., 2005). It is a core component of the broader concept of self-determination, through which individuals live autonomous lives and make decisions independently (Wehmeyer et al., 2003). In the school context of the Canton of Vaud (Switzerland), students with special educational needs (SEN) are expected to become self-advocates to discuss and ensure the implementation of the support they require. However, these skills develop gradually, beginning in early childhood through everyday experiences. Therefore, family involvement is crucial in supporting their acquisition.Our current research project aims to develop 11 self-advocacy skills for students with SEN. Funded by the Swiss Federal Office for the Equality of People with Disabilities and the University of Teacher Education of the Canton of Vaud, this participatory action research involves families in co-creating materials to be used with their children. Two groups of co-researchers participate: four adolescents and three mothers, collaborating with two researchers. The resulting materials will later be shared through an open-access platform for wider use by families. This poster presents how we collaboratively conceptualized and designed agentic materials (Snaza et al., 2016), enabling families to engage in “series of situations” (Dewey, 1998) that, through lived experience, can transform both individuals and their environments. We will describe the iterative work cycles with co-researchers and families that led to the co-construction and adaptation of multimodal learning materials, as well as examples of the resources that emerged from this creative and participatory process.

Snaza, N., Sonu, D., Truman, S. E., & Zaliwska, Z. (2016). [Introduction to] Pedagogical Matters: New Materialisms and Curriculum Studies. Peter Lang Publishing, Inc..

This presentation examines the methodological value of projective storytelling as a qualitative research tool for investigating children’s subjective experiences. Research with children requires approaches that are both ethically sensitive and developmentally attuned. Projective techniques provide children with symbolic and indirect means to articulate subjective experiences and meaning. The presentation will focus on the development and adaptation of the Lissy Storytellling test (LI.ST), a projective story completion test designed for children aged 3–12, within the Greek population. The tool was developed by the Laboratory of Clinical Research: Subjectivity and Social Bond at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and is currently being applied in empirical studies investigating children’s experiences of trauma and resilience. Specifically, the LI.ST. Test has been utilized in research with children in flood-affected areas of Thessaly following Storm Daniel and with children diagnosed with neoplastic diseases. In these studies, the LI.ST. Test is employed alongside other qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews and children’s drawings, to enhance interpretive depth. Preliminary findings indicate that projective storytelling offers a symbolic and psychologically safe way for children to talk about traumatic experiences. The method’s indirect nature appears to reduce defensiveness and promote narrative elaboration, thereby enhancing both data richness and helping children to process distressing experiences in a mediated, less threatening manner. The presentation will discuss methodological considerations, ethical implications, and future research directions, underscoring the contribution of projective storytelling to qualitative research with children.

In response to pressing global and local crises affecting marginalized Canadian youth, this study engages houseless young people as co-researchers in a two-phase participatory intervention grounded in an Ecological Systems approach. Rooted in collaborative and arts-based qualitative practice, the project centers youth voices and agency through storytelling, multimodal expression, and cross-sector dialogue. In the first phase, homeless youth (N=20) will individually complete a locator form, a demographic questionnaire, and a self-efficacy scale. Next, the same youth will participate in two focus groups composed of 10 youth each group. Youth will be asked about 1) current struggles and needs, 2) resources/services utilized, 3) barriers in accessing resources/services, and 4) possible solutions for improvements in service-delivery system. The focus group interviews will be audio-recorded and themes will be developed based on the grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2008). These collective narratives inform a series of participatory video workshops designed as creative, dialogic spaces. Over six weeks, youth will learn to script, film, and edit short videos highlighting their lived experiences and will be encouraged to view and discuss each other's videos, fostering community, resilience, and awareness of common struggles and resources. In Phase II, the youth-generated content will be woven into a 20-minute composite film which will then be presented to a small group (4–6) of community stakeholders (i.e., policy makers and service providers) in a facilitated focus group designed to explore the video's potential to shift perspectives and practices. This study will present findings from the assessments and focus group interviews conducted with houseless youth in Phase 1. By foregrounding youth creativity, collaboration, and collective meaning-making, this study speaks to broader global conversations around equity, interdependence, and shared vulnerability. This research highlights the transformative power of community-led, arts-based inquiry in navigating complex socio-political landscapes and fostering hope in challenging times.

Introduction: Workplace bullying is defined as a systematic and prolonged mistreatment of one or more employees by supervisors and/or colleagues at the workplace, and where the targets also find it difficult to defend themselves against the harassment (Einarsen, Hoel, et al., 2020).

Workplace bullying has received significant international attention in the literature with a wide range of books and articles in occupational health, medicine, epidemiology, psychology and management, in fact the field of study has exploded exponentially.

While much quantitative studies to date have focused on prevalence, cost, behaviours, effects and consequences, far fewer qualitative studies have sought to explore the subjective/lived experiences of the employees who have been targets of workplace bullying, and even fewer have investigated the experiences of primary school educators from an existential/phenomenological perspective.

Aim of study: This study seeks to address that gap by exploring how primary school teachers experience and make sense of workplace bullying in their professional lives.

Research methodology: A phenomenological research design was employed, specifically interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two primary school teachers, providing rich, first-person accounts. Data were analysed thematically to identify recurring patterns and underlying meanings within participants’ narratives.

Preliminary findings: Preliminary findings highlight three key themes: lack of belonging/feelings of isolation, professional identity being undermined, institutional complicity and silence. These insights reveal the impact of workplace bullying on the sense of self of each participant, and how, as a phenomenon, it can be silenced within the school environment.

Conclusion: The study contributes to a deeper understanding of workplace bullying in primary education and underlines the urgent need for interventions that prioritise teacher wellbeing.

Public engagement with research has a prominent role to play in today’s research landscape, which is hallmarked by complex, interconnected, and deeply embedded challenges relevant to our everyday lives.

Over the past few decades, interactions between research communities and publics have changed, becoming more attuned to building trusted relationships, addressing real-world concerns, and involving people more deeply in the research journeys that ultimately affect them. Added to this, the rise of misinformation and misgivings around academic expertise, makes it more important than ever to foster inclusive and democratic forms of knowledge creation.

For qualitative inquiry–based research this is very relevant, with participatory and engaged approaches foregrounding the very purpose of research and encouraging the inclusion of people’s lived experiences, the voices of underrepresented communities, and in spotlighting different social and cultural contexts.

However, important questions remain - such as how to further break down the barriers between academia and society and how we address practical impedances to help individual researchers or teams build and sustain community-research partnerships.

This presentation will explore these issues, while sharing some experiences from the European Science Engagement Association, which turns 25 years old in 2026 and represents a diverse family of Universities, NGOs, cultural bodies and other actors sharing a common interest to advance public engagement within the research and innovation ecosystem. Some current resources and initiatives will also be highlighted for those interested to develop networks or ideas further.

This study examines the challenges of recruiting “hard-to-reach” populations in qualitative research and explores how these challenges can themselves generate knowledge. The research focuses on Russian-speaking immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) in Israel who care for a family member with a severe mental illness.

Participants were recruited using purposive and snowball sampling. Data collection included in-depth semi-structured interviews, with reflexive attention to the researcher’s positionality as both a social worker and cultural insider. Recruitment difficulties, refusals, and ambivalent responses were systematically recorded and analyzed alongside the interview narratives to reveal the broader social meanings embedded in participation and non-participation.

Recruitment was shaped by cultural and institutional factors, including mistrust of authorities, prior experiences with mental health systems, and concerns about privacy and exposure. Gendered caregiving norms were evident: most participants were women, often mothers, while fathers and other family caregivers were largely absent, reflecting broader socio-cultural patterns. The researcher’s professional identity facilitated access but also introduced ethical and reflexive complexities, as participants navigated the tension between researcher, helper, and cultural peer. Engaging participants in culturally adapted settings, such as Russian-speaking family psychoeducational groups, increased participation and strengthened immigrant caregivers’ sense of empowerment and inclusion.

The study demonstrates that recruitment processes can serve as a source of epistemic insight, revealing participants’ lived experiences, relational strategies, and negotiations of power and trust. Recruitment challenges should not be regarded merely as methodological obstacles but as an integral component of relational and cultural knowledge. Insights elicited during the recruitment process can be treated as an independent source of data and as a potential means of triangulating the findings derived from the research interviews.

The political climate in Finland regarding immigration is polarised. The country needs labour migration to address future demographic changes and labour shortages in key sectors. At the same time, many immigrants do not feel welcome. This tension raises a key question: how do highly educated immigrants, who are both wanted and unwanted, navigate their position in Finnish society and working life?

This question is not only rhetorical but also shapes immigrants’ everyday realities. Public discourse and policy increasingly present immigrants’ inclusion as requiring individuals to take more responsibility for their work and life. Yet these demands collide with immigrants’ experience that, however hard they try, it may have little effect on feeling included. This individually experienced dilemma is acutely affective: immigrants often live within a rollercoaster of suspicion, frustration, hope and recognition.

Our study is situated at this intersection of polarisation, responsibilisation and affective climates. We examine how highly educated immigrants navigate of work and life in Finland by mobilising or abandoning narrative resources in order to sustain work careers and personal lives that matter to them.

In our study, we analyse in-depth interviews thematically and comparatively, while also tracing the narrative undercurrents of hope, frustration, exhaustion and resilience. Particular attention is paid to similarities and variations within and across the professional fields of health and business. Our study demonstrates how political and labour market discourses resonate in everyday immigrant experiences, shaping these through affective conditions.

Abstract

Well-being is a critical aspect of human experience, particularly in the context of geographic mobility. This qualitative study, which was funded by the Hellenic Foundation of Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.), explores the lived experiences and conceptualizations of well-being in relation to mobility. We conducted 80 biographical narrative interviews and used visual methods (photovoice) to explore how well-being is constructed, challenged, and prioritized across four groups: students in Greece contemplating moving abroad, postgraduate students studying abroad, professionals settled abroad, and returnees to Greece. The findings reveal a dynamic interplay of individual, relational, environmental, and cultural factors, with professionals abroad highlighting the dichotomy between professional advantages and social ties in Greece. Additionally, an ecological dimension of wellbeing emerges, as participants emphasize the role of sustainable environments, access to natural spaces, and balanced lifestyles in mitigating the psychological challenges associated with brain drain. These findings underscore the centrality of well-being in life decisions and the need for holistic, context-sensitive approaches in policy and practice. The study offers novel insights into the psychosocial dynamics of mobility, proposing targeted interventions to enhance well-being.

The adverse effects of globalization in education are cruelly felt in both South and North countries. They are experienced in extended neo-liberal policies and privatization or weakened care and welfare for the most disadvantaged. The spread of capitalism accelerates technical and managerial modernizing processes, with profitable investments in human capital using neuroscience, digitalization and AI as a source of legitimation. This intensified international competition strengthens inequalities and discriminations, while fostering feelings of humiliation and injustice for those who are not considered of as "talented" of “gifted” and being excluded, despite inclusive policies, from paths to “meritocratic” excellence and cosmopolitan elite. But social barriers are even higher for those who are far from big cities where education and employment are being redefined to meet globalizing and digitalizing standards. The quest for modernity in China leads to numerous social gaps and pathologies: suffering, burn-out and stress, often described as psychosocial risks, but also imposed migration due to urbanization, rural exodus and work uberization; competition in accessing educational resources as such as diplomas and certifications. These new impoverishing and marginalizing conditions, as the contribution shows, distort people lives and experiences by promoting individualistic interests, destroying not only traditional modes of solidarity, but also local cultures on behalf of rationalization, effectiveness and performance. At the same time, Chinese cultural modes of existence and moral commitments are denied. These social pathologies give rise to growing claims for recognition and justice, while new kinds of alienation and dependence are developing, with Chinese minorities, particularly gender diverse individuals, facing increased victimization, racialization and stigmatization. This adds a focus on gender alongside the existing issues of race and minority status.

In a context of increasing international migration, new forms of family organization emerge, acting as desiring machines that reconfigure emotional bonds and care arrangements beyond physical borders. These transnational families generate new flows of affection, responsibility, and support that challenge the traditional notion of the nuclear family. This study explored the perceptions and experiences of psychologists in a rural community in Honduras regarding transnational families. The methodology employed was schizoanalytic cartography, conceived as a mapping of affective flows, care relationships, and desiring assemblages, inspired by the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari. Rather than producing a static or hierarchical description, this cartography traces the movements, connections, and transformations of desire and care within and across family networks. Data were collected through 15 in-depth interviews and one focus group. Analyses drew on schizoanalysis to examine how professional discourses articulate desire, social control, and representations of the family. Preliminary results reveal two main findings. The first is the psychologists’ persistent desire to maintain a family structure that keeps both parents present, interpreting the absence of migrant mothers and fathers as an affective lack. In many cases, this emphasis on “absence” may reflect the professional’s social expectations, which do not always fully capture the diverse experiences of children. From a schizoanalytic perspective, children can engage in processes of affective deterritorialization and experiment with new ways of assembling care. Similarly, the second theme highlights a predominantly negative view of parental migration, often focusing on potential challenges for children, which can contribute to a normative desiring framework centered on the nuclear family, but these interpretations coexist with other, more flexible and creative family arrangements. Understanding these families through schizoanalytic cartography makes visible the multiple care arrangements, creative strategies for maintaining connections, and ways in which affections are reorganized beyond the normative frameworks of the traditional family.

In an era of escalating global crises and ideological polarization, the field of psychology faces a critical test of its social justice commitments. This panel presents a cohesive, multi-methodological inquiry into the mechanisms of epistemic violence—specifically Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian rhetoric—within U.S. clinical psychology training. Moving from intimate testimony to collective strategizing, we illuminate how settler colonial and white supremacist discursive formations are perpetuated through everyday interactions, institutional policies, and clinical pedagogies. The panel begins with an autoethnographic excavation of epistemic violence across political eras (Paper 1), revealing the continuity of derailing and gaslighting tactics that protect dominant comfort. This is followed by a composite narrative (Paper 2) that vividly portrays the pathologizing of Palestinian identity and the violent boundaries of “treatability” within a program espousing equity. The third paper (Paper 3) shifts from narrative to embodiment, using somatic practice and scholarly review to frame epistemic violence not as an abstract concept but as a visceral, bodily harm. The panel culminates (Paper 4) in a praxis-oriented dialogue, collaboratively generating actionable strategies for micro-level interventions and macro-level institutional transformation. Together, these papers challenge the field of psychology and the wider academic community to move beyond recognition toward responsible action. By weaving autoethnography, narrative, somatic inquiry, and participatory dialogue, we model an unsettling approach to research—one that disrupts settler colonial and white supremacist discursive formations, exposes the violences of dominant knowledge systems, and holds psychology, clinical practice, and academia accountable to the futures we must collectively shape.

This presentation introduces childing as a post-age methodology through a choreographed video drawn from the research project Small Matters: An Educational Community Project about Multispecies Death and Dying (2023–2026), funded by the Research Council of Finland. The project brings together ‘small matters’ - young children, viruses, insects, microbes, plastics, and digital trace - as political agents in spaces where they are usually excluded from conversations about death and dying.

While the example comes from this project, childing methodologies are post-age. Like the ‘post’ in posthumanism, post-age is not about leaving childhood behind, but about troubling developmental and chronological conceptions of time. Childhood here is not a stage of becoming but a mode of being-with, a relational, intensive orientation ‘to’ the world. The referent of this performative practice is not ‘the’ child: there is no individualised, developing subject en route to maturity. Childing decentres the (adult) human and opens material-discursive possibilities for research by reconfiguring how knowledge, time, and agency are produced.

As a childing methodology, performative videography treats video not as a representational tool but as an intra-active participant in the enquiry - an apparatus that co-creates knowledge through movement, rhythm, and affect. Aligned with the conference theme, it engages the intricate interplay between human and more-than-human forces. In our example, video editing techniques such as slow motion, repetition, and reverse cuts enact the temporal complexity of children’s philosophical play about death and dying. Rather than documenting, performative videography thinks-with material, sound, and gesture - inviting the viewer to experience the entanglement of image, body, and thought beyond the boundaries of the human subject.

Music therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music to achieve individualized goals. Using music therapy in early childhood addresses social/emotional development, language and literacy, cognition, and perceptual motor and physical development. This convergent parallel study consisted of a series of investigations, some qualitative and some quantitative over different time periods. Results concluded that music therapy improved externalizing behaviors, internalizing behaviors, and adaptive skills. In conclusion, an environment rooted in respect for children’s right to participate in music associated with their culture drives our clinical decision-making as we design and implement session plans to support all learners. From these results, the research team designed an online learning center for professional development training including courses on trauma-informed practices, holistic approaches to development, differentiated instruction, the use of verbal skills in working with early childhood, supporting early childhood with musical elements, and supporting early childhood with musical elements.

This paper offers a methodological reflection on conducting ethnographic research with children in superdiverse schools: sites where global flows, institutional norms, and children’s everyday practices intersect. Drawing on a prestudy using participant observation in the least-adult role, I consider the challenges and possibilities of researching children’s school experiences. I begin from a critical reading of the dominant concepts of “sense of school belonging” and “homophily,” which risk reducing belonging to subjective feeling and reify the supposed centrality of similarity, rather than attending to how children actively navigate the familiar and unfamiliar.

Foregrounding methodological experiences and claims, I discuss how moving between different modes of ethnographic engagement — from participative to more detached observation, from focal-child to event-focused strategies, and from open to structured techniques — shaped what could be seen and known. I also reflect on the tensions of occupying shifting positions between least-adult participation, observation, and interviewing. These methodological choices not only structured the data I could generate but also revealed how my presence was negotiated by children and inflected their own practices and experiences.

Through this reflexive engagement, I argue that qualitative inquiry with children in superdiverse contexts requires attentiveness both to researcher positionality and to the institutional conditions in which belonging and intergroup relations are enacted. Ethnography can illuminate how children rework categories of difference and belonging, but only if theoretical and methodological frameworks remain open to being unsettled by the field itself. By critically interrogating belonging and homophily, and reflecting on the situated dynamics of ethnographic practice, this paper contributes to broader conversations on how qualitative research can respond to interconnectedness and shared vulnerabilities while sustaining dialogical and collaborative engagements with participants.

Early Childhood Education (ECE), and indeed education more broadly, has long been dominated by a neoliberal narrative that commodifies every aspect of life. As several scholars have noted, the current polycrisis reveals how this narrative is not only reductive and narrowing, but also unable to address challenges symptomatic of its own logic (Sousa & Moss, 2024). In troubling times, however, alternatives might find terrain to be formed, but as Sousa and Moss notes, alternative ideas and narratives are not enough. Accordingly, this paper aims to problematize and experiment with educational evaluation practices in ECE — not merely as an effort to re-think or re-conceptualize such practices, but to re-make them, experimenting with alternative modes of evaluation and, in doing so, engaging with the question of valuing differently.

In this paper the notion and practice of evaluation in ECE is explored by drawing on affirmative critique, moving beyond criticism as a distant, retrospective, and negative approach (see Staunæs, 2016). Engaging with affirmative critique—grounded in a critical perspective and informed by feminist new materialism (Barad, 2007; Haraway, 2016)—I investigate and problematize evaluation practices from within the same practice where they are enacted, collaborating with preschool professionals from two different preschool settings. Together, we affirmatively problematize existing evaluation practices in each setting, pointing to what could be otherwise, and creatively experiment with alternative ways of doing evaluation — thus both imagining and enacting possible 'elsewheres', humbly borrowing the term from Haraway (1992, singular in original). In the presentation, I outline the genealogy of thought underpinning the paper and present some tentative results from the ongoing analysis.

This presentation draws on methodological insights that emerged from my master’s thesis in social work, which explored meanings cosntructed by Israeli parents of their gay or lesbian child’s coming-out. As a gay man, an insider to the researched phenomena, I will present the methodological challenges of interviewing parents as someone who is, in many ways, their child.

This unique positioning raised pressing questions of power and voice: Whose voice am I trying to hear, and whose voice do I ultimately amplify? How do I listen authentically when I also long to hear something very specific? At times, I longed for acceptance, while parents offered confusion or silence. This revealed not only the gap between fantasy and reality, but also the methodological complexity of being both insider and outsider in the field.

A recurring experience was what I conceptualized as parents’ movement from shattered reality to new reality. Parents described the collapse of imagined life scripts, while I too faced the shattering of my fantasy–that they would say what I longed to hear from my own parents. In this parallel process, I found myself learning to accept the parents as they were, just as I once hoped my parents would accept myself and those like me, and perhaps as I wished these parents would accept their own children.

This research highlights qualitative inquiry as a dialogical and collaborative practice. The interviews and analysis process became spaces of connection across differences, where flows of meaning moved between researcher and participants, shaped by vulnerability, expectation, and context. In times of tension, such encounters show how reflexivity and positionality generate challenges and possibilities for dialogue and transformation.

By situating the researcher explicitly within the field of collaborative meaning-making, this presentation corresponds with broader methodological conversations on qualitative research as dialogical, and ethically complex.

Borrowing the flattery and accolades vintners reserve for wine labels

We seized the sought after acclaims, as Women

- -- more deserving of those praises

Generously pouring them out like rare “compliment cocktails”

Filling our academic souls to the brim with

the truths we know,

the truths we want said aloud,

the truths we want each other to hear

and to feel

and to accept

and to hold onto ...

For years, the presenter has been conducting small, intimate qualitative studies with friends/co-authors using collaborative autoethnographic (Ellis,et al., 2011) and poetic inquiry (Faulkner, 2005) methodologies to collectively (re)examine the implications, realizations, and nuances of their shared identity as “Women in academia.” Recently, the presenter has identified a unique method of “found poetry” that successfully convenes and prompts authentic, uncensored conversations amongst co-authors so that they can discuss, dissect, and debate the definition and experiences of being Women in academia, in general (self-cite, in press), and in relation to their collaborative research endeavors. In a “dinner party-like” setting, the presenter has used wine bottles’ consumption to facilitate free-flowing conversations and the wine bottles’ labels as found poetry sources for writing free-verse poetry. In these casual settings, the presenter-led poetic writing sessions provide shared creative spaces for investigating, interrogating, and ultimately clarifying participants’ identities within their personal/professional lives so that they can better understand themselves in relation to research studies they are co-investigating.

Defining one’s positionality and recognizing one’s identity in relation to scholarly work and/or academia is essential to qualitative research because a researcher's worldview, identity, and background can significantly influence the research process When these individual poetry writings are composed in collective writing sessions it can assist co-authors in clarifying their positionality within their communities, classrooms, and research fields; thereby moving collaborative research forward with a more self-awareness and truthfulness.

McCullis (2013) claims that we are all surrounded by poetry and that we are drawn to poems for the joy, meanings, and memories they bring to our lives, because “they have the ability to reveal the truth of our lives more passionately than the overlying narrative” (p. 109). Similarly, Nye (2015) sings praise for poetry’s deep attribute of being able “to pause, to look, to listen, to respect, to pay attention to variety and learn something new.” Following Nye and Percer's (2002) encouragement “to lean into our natural tendency towards poetic verse to help us make sense of these senseless time, to present our nontraditional narratives through nontraditional research practice, and to better document, for others, the beautiful complexity of our lives in a way that only poetry can capture” (self-cite, 2020), the Dream Team (DT)session presenter seeks to lead participants in a wine-based found poetry writing session with their co-authors (if also in conference attendance).

The presenter will lead DT attendees in individual self-study in a collective space using poetic inquiry “to talk about identity and communication in a more nuanced fashion” that embraces the “emotionality of doing research” (Faulkner, 2015, p. 2). Copies of wine LABELS will be provided; wine consumption (and poetry experience) is NOT required for this session but rather symbolizes that this time is meant to mimic a space where attendees can feel most natural and at ease to discuss themselves and their relationship to their research.

While all are welcome, the intended audience is self-identified Women in academia with an explicit encouragement that co-researchers attend this session together to engage in a structured version of “friendship as methodology” (Tillman-Healey, 2003) to promote the trust and safety necessary to encourage friendly conversation and later guide the raw reporting of truth telling in a way that most honestly captures poetic lives through the principles of interpretivism (Denzin, 1997) and interactive interviewing (Ellis, et al., 1997). Individual attendees are still welcomed as the goal of the DT session will not seek to capture “the totality of social life but to interpret reflectively slices and glimpses of localized interaction in order to understand more fully both others and ourselves” (Tillmann-Healy, 2003, p. 732).

The presenter hopes attendees will consider continuing this place-based poetic pursuit started in Athens, Greece by later contributing to a collective poetry publication with the present which would seek to capture the realizations of our claimed identities resulting from discussions throughout the self-study DT session.

Selected References

Ellis, C., Adams, T.E., and Bochner, A.P. (2011). Autoethnography: an overview.

Faulkner, S.L. (2015). Knit Four, Make One: Poems.

Nye, N.S. (29 September 2015). What Inspires Her Poetry.

Tillmann-Healy, L. M. (2003). Friendship as method. Qualitative Inquiry, 9(5). 729-749.

This Dream Team presentation emerges from the international initiative Systemic Voices for Peace, which invites systemic thinkers and practitioners to reflect on global crises and societal challenges through a systemic lens. Building on the Manifesto’s call for awareness, dialogue, and responsibility, our session explores the role of psychotherapy in nurturing peace, justice, and relational responsibility.

We view psychotherapy not as a neutral or apolitical practice, but as an engaged ethical stance—one that acknowledges the interconnectedness of personal, relational, and societal systems. Peace, from a systemic perspective, is not just the absence of conflict but the presence of justice, dignity, and mutual dialogue.

Through collaborative dialogue and shared reflection, we aim to share collective insights on the challenges and responsibilities that arise when systemic practice meets social and political realities. Moreover, we aim to explore psychotherapy as a space of resistance, accountability, and hope—a form of political and ethical practice that can contribute to peacebuilding within and beyond the therapy room.

In the spirit of ECQI’s commitment to relational, reflexive, and transformative inquiry, this presentation invites participants to join an open systemic dialogue about what it means to be therapists and citizens in times of global conflicts and uncertainty.

Mark is standing here in front of you, the bodies collective? Where is the collective? Jess and Ryan are in North America, Davina and Sarah are in the UK, Claudia in Switzerland, Alys in Australia. Karin and Tatiana are here at the conference somewhere. For different reasons they cannot be here in this room with us. Or can they? Let’s see who will join us online? Can we have some kind of physicality together? Can we breathe together across continents?

The bodies collective has been searching for collaborative practices and relational connection in what we call bodyography since first meeting at ECQI in Leuven. And since the covid pandemic we have been experimenting with physical connection over long distance. At the same time we have always questioned hierarchy, especially the hierarchy between mind and body, that seems to fit in so well into our brave new online world. What hierarchies might happen, and how can they be flattened in live in the online-extended space between us? What do we want to do together in this half-open space?

These questions will guide us in a playful collaboration to explore possibilities of experiencing connectedness in our body whilst being connected with some people online.

Against the backdrop of this year’s congress theme, this paper explores how the creative, material, and community-based practice of contemporary knitting shapes our way of being in and responding to the world. Furthermore, it asks how we might engage in qualitative inquiries while acknowledging the vibrant entanglements and assemblages of the non-human, advocating for non-textual documentation as well as speculative processes as essential parts of arts-based research.

In my ongoing PhD project, I explore the growing resurgence of knitting as a communal activity and its potential to shape the practitioner’s understanding of everyday life, asking how practices of social, material and embodied collaboration evoke forms of care and response-ability (Haraway, 2016). I advocate for a movement between the boundaries of theory and practice, one that treats making as thinking, and, as such, I experiment with qualitative methods that embrace and take the interplay between human and non-human seriously. During my time as a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne, I was introduced to the concept of a/r/tography. To me, the concept, which stems from an “understanding of arts-based research as enacted living inquiry” (Springgay et al., 2005), resonated with my research’s aim of engaging with materials as active participants, and in continuation thereof, understanding how creative, embodied practices influence the ways we know and experience the world.

Based on a series of knitting workshops conducted during my research stay, I explore how a/r/tography can serve as a method for engaging participants with their everyday lives through the material act of knitting. As practiced in a/r/tography, I also draw on my own lived inquiry as a knitter, weaving in autoethnographic reflections and exploring how these experiences inform my research.

The arts are becoming more common in management education to move beyond traditional teaching and prepare students for the complex, uncertain, and value-driven challenges they face in organizations and society. Despite their growing application, the field remains fragmented, marked by divergent definitions, epistemological foundations, and varying degrees of artistic integration. This paper addresses this fragmentation by drawing on 70 qualitative case studies that highlight aesthetic epistemologies as well as constructivist and experiential approaches.

This study explores how the arts are integrated into business education in diverse forms such as poetry, photography, and performance. It does so through a systematic review of peer-reviewed research (1998 and 2024). The study follows PRISMA standards and employs a transparent, traceable methodology supported by Zotero, R, and OSF. This process strengthens credibility and rigor in qualitative reviews which is increasingly relevant with the growing use of AI.

Thematic coding synthesizes key debates and epistemological foundations in the literature, deepening understanding of artistic inquiry and its educational intentions. It also showcases methodological diversity while highlighting the strengths and limitations of these experimental and creative practices, particularly in transdisciplinary settings.

Building on these insights, this paper introduces a comparative framework that makes a distinction between arts-based, arts-informed, and arts-related teaching methods. This framework positions practices along a continuum of artistic integration, ranging from immersive to illustrative uses of art, while clarifying their educational purposes and outcomes. The framework clarifies different ways of integrating art in qualitative inquiry and reducing ambiguity in terminology.

By mapping both the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of integrating art, the study advances theoretical clarity, provides educators with a practical tool for reflection, and supports transdisciplinary research on the transformative potential of the arts. It also fosters methodological innovation and sparks critical discussion on the role of arts-based inquiry in transdisciplinary settings.

This presentation is a blend of immanenent writing, psychogeography and street-art based on a long-term visit to Florence, the cradle of the Rennaisance, to ask questions about the contemporary return of fascism in Europe. it is born from a curiostiy with British poets in Florence, colonials but also radicals who provide an ideal position for an interrogation of politics and place. The aim is to follow the lives of Grand Tour poets, exploring their own resistance to British culture to develop an artis-based refelction of Italian protest, but also wider assemblages of dissent. The talk will involve the pressentation of twelve art works accompanied by immanant writing, poetry and movement.

This study explores the teaching of writing as an art form, based on teachers’ experiences. More specifically, it focuses on creative writing as an out-of-school activity and the art form known in Finland as literary art (Swe. ordkonst). The aim of the study is to explore how teachers of literary art for children and youth, within the context of basic education in the arts in Finland, express their teaching practices. We pose the following research question: What do literary art teachers express that they do in literary art education within basic education in the arts? The study is grounded in performative theoretical perspectives, based on relational ontology, and we use poetic inquiry as method of analysis. Expressions from six literary art teachers are interwoven into five research poems. The results show that teachers in literary art emphasize writing as an art form and highlight writing as a complex, moving, affective, unpredictable, and co-creative process. The role of the literary art teacher can be seen as hybrid, where the teacher is simultaneously a writing artist, educator, and reader.

This presentation discusses findings from an arts-based qualitative activity that is part of a longitudinal PhD thesis project. The larger study explores the lived experiences of a polyamorous network (polycule). Eight members of an interconnected polycule were invited to create individual collages that visually represented their personal journeys, identities, and relational dynamics within polyamory. Drawing on feminist, queer, and relational ontologies, this project privileges participant meaning-making, inviting multiple truths to coexist in visual and narrative form.

Collage, as both method and product, offers a unique way to access and represent the layered, non-linear, and affectively rich terrain of polyamorous life. Participants engaged the medium to explore themes such as boundary negotiation, fluid kinship, emotional labor, and the interplay of autonomy and connection.

The resulting presentation features reproductions of all collages, accompanied by brief participant narratives and key interpretive themes that emerged. Through this multimodal presentation, the project seeks not only to illuminate how polyamorous people conceptualize and communicate the complexities of their relationships, but also to foreground the potential of visual methodologies in qualitative research on intimate life.

This work contributes to broader conversations in sexuality studies, visual sociology, and arts-based research by demonstrating how creative expression can make space for voices often marginalized in normative narratives of love and partnership. The presentation invites viewers to engage visually, emotionally, and intellectually with the participants' representations, and to consider how collage can serve as both an archive of experience and a form of resistance to dominant relational scripts.

This panel explores what else a body might become when movement methodologies are foregrounded. From glitching gendered childhoods and tracing gestures as proto-political citizens of a community to come, to thinking-with neurodiverse feet, re/moving through precarious well-becomings, and composing an ecology of ‘bog somatics’ to experiment with new forms of dance education, these papers diffract movement as method and matter. Drawing on feminist new materialist, posthuman, and somatic linkages and lineages, the panel centres research as an embodied, relational, and ecological practice of attunement, where movement itself thinks, feels, and creates Otherwise.

Postfoundational Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry is an edited collection that provides a framing for these two panels. The book aims to move beyond a critique and deconstruction of method in order to present an engagement with various postfoundational frameworks and approaches that produce new concepts and enactments. What makes the contributions to the book unique, and the subsequent new papers generated for this conference, is the singular focus on postfoundational paradigms, borrowed from the humanities and sciences, that are enveloped in what is referred to as the ontological turn, the new empiricisms, and the new materialisms. Postfoundational inquiry in this context is conceived as emergent, relational, responsive, involuntary, and inventive.

In the original book, the editors invited authors to offer enactments as a way of reorienting toward what is unthought, not yet, and becoming. This “not yet” is that which happens “in the moment of sensing, thinking, reading, and writing in the production of the new” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2023, p. 5). These enactments are not bound to foundational assumptions in that they do not follow a predetermined method, nor do they attempt to represent traditional accounts of fieldwork. Furthermore, they do not aim to critique or deconstruct. Instead, they overturn and displace foundations not only by attuning to the contingency of what emerges, but also by decentering human agency in favor of prepersonal, affective encounters that are of the world.

In these two sessions, an orienting introduction will be provided to explain more fully the facets of postfoundational inquiry as emergent, relational, responsive, involuntary, and inventive. Contributors to these panels were invited to revisit their earlier writings and consider:

How is your current work aligned with postfoundational approaches?

What you learned, or how your work has shifted/extended from the chapter produced for the book?

Authoritarianism constitutes a staple of social and political psychology research since Adorno et al.’s Authoritarian Personality (1950). Adorno and his colleagues drew heavily on theoretical and methodological insights from psychoanalysis, Marxian thinking and the American empiricist psychology of their times. In so doing, they formulated an extensive, research-based account of authoritarianism as a construct that links specific socioeconomic and political conditions with the cultural production, through, mainly, pedagogical practices, of a type of personality that is particularly vulnerable to fascist propaganda. The notion of culture and the concern over the de(legitimation) of political authoritarianism are pivotal for our research also. However, our epistemological position diverges from the one favoured by Adorno et al. Drawing on critical discursive social psychology, we maintain that the naturalisation and reproduction of authoritarian political practices occur thoughtfully within rhetorical / ideological practices unfolding, amongst other domains, in political discourse and lay talk, often through invocations and rhetorical uses of occasioned constructions of culture. Our analytic corpora consist of (a) transcripts of Greek parliamentary debates pertaining to the so-called ‘wiretapping affair’ a surveillance scandal, which recently rocked Greece’s pollical life raising concerns as to the (alleged) governmental authoritarian turn in the country; and, of (b) twelve focus groups, collected within a wider research project on authoritarianism, with some of the groups enlisting participants employed in Greek military and police forces. Our analyses indicate that, in both political and lay discourse, a common discursive resource, mobilised, for the (de-)legitimation of authoritarian political practices pertains to evaluatively tinged conceptualisations of culture and hierarchically ordered cultural difference. As we argue, culture and cultural hierarchy, emerge as rhetorical / ideological resources and accomplishments for meaning making, accountability management and (de-)legitimation of authoritarian political practices.

This paper examines the perspectives of young people from challenging contexts in 10 European countries (Austria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain) on the state of democracy and its development in the near future. Across European Union there are trends of growing alienation of youth from democratic institutions and declining political participation. Aforementioned makes understanding the views of young people on democracy in 21st-century Europe important. Data were collected through the Horizon Europe project "Critical ChangeLab - Democracy meets arts: Critical change labs for building democratic cultures through creative and narrative practices." A standardized research approach enabled comparative analysis across 10 different contexts. In each country, in-depth case studies were conducted, including focus groups with young, semi-structured interviews with individuals working with these youth, and a mini ethnography. The selected cases reflect the diversity of young people’s identities and life circumstances, capturing significant variation across geographic locations, from rural areas and small towns to national capitals and major European cities like Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona. The study also addressed the experiences of youth facing various hardships, such as female teenage STEM students, youth at the EU’s borders, migrants, those in substitute care, and LGBTQ youth. Focus group participants, aged 11 to 19, were selected in cooperation with organizations familiar with the youth and their challenges. Additionally, project partners identified individuals from local government, educational institutions, NGOs, and youth associations for interviews, providing further insights into young people's democratic opportunities. A total of 80 young people and 49 individuals working with youth participated in the research. The results offer valuable insights into the diverse perspectives of youth in challenging contexts and how variations in context, social structures, civic education, and the digital society shape their experiences and views on democracy today and in the near future.

Across generations, South Louisiana has existed at the intersection of environmental, economic, and social upheaval—where climate migration, recurring storms, and the deep scars of environmental racism and generational poverty converge. From hurricanes that reshape coastlines to industrial contamination that poisons land and water, the region’s history tells a story of communities repeatedly displaced, rebuilding on shifting ground, and enduring cycles of loss and renewal. Violence, both physical and structural, threads through this narrative: the violence of extraction, neglect, and systemic inequity that positions resilience not as choice but as necessity. Over time, endurance has become a hallmark of regional identity—celebrated in folklore, media, and policy alike—yet increasingly weaponized to rationalize insufficient aid, stalled recovery, and the continued exploitation of people and place.

This paper critiques how resilience is weaponized and co-opted by institutions to sustain inequitable systems. Rather than fostering genuine well-being or reform, organizational narratives valorize individuals’ capacity to endure adversity, framing perseverance as virtue while deflecting responsibility for structural change. This dynamic disproportionately affects marginalized groups, who are praised for “pushing through” exhaustion or injustice instead of being supported through meaningful transformation.

Using a community phenomenological approach, this work examines the lived experience and collective memory of South Louisiana over the past two decades of storms, poverty, and terrorism-related trauma. It interrogates how resilience has been defined by outsiders—government agencies, media, and institutions—and the ways these definitions have been weaponized to justify neglect, austerity, and cultural stereotyping. By situating personal narrative within broader sociopolitical and environmental contexts, the paper explores the enduring impacts of this weaponization on community identity, well-being, and recovery, calling for a reorientation toward collective care, structural accountability, and authentic forms of resilience grounded in place and lived experience.

This conceptual paper examines the potential long-term psychosocial and somatic ramifications of recently passed conservative education laws in US states like Florida and Texas. These laws, which severely restrict discussions of gender, sexuality, and human biology in public schools, codify ideological assumptions that (a) minors must be protected from "inappropriate" topics, and (b) sex before heterosexual marriage is wrong and dangerous.

Drawing on narrative inquiry data from eight women raised within conservative Christian communities that enacted these same ideologies, we employ Jackson and Mazzei’s (2022) "plugging in" methodology. We analyse the women’s lived experiences of bodily illiteracy, sexual shame, and chronic genital pain (dyspareunia) as a prospective lens to understand the potential consequences of these laws especially on children with vulvas and vaginas. The findings illustrate how enforced silences and disparaging discourses led to a profound alienation from their own bodies, a phenomenon conceptualised by Labuski (2015) as the accumulation of “genital baggage.”

We argue that these legislative acts function as state-sanctioned mediating institutions that perpetuate this accumulation, fostering sexual illiteracy and creating conditions where genital pain and dysfunction become normalized. The analysis demonstrates how ideological messages can become somatically embodied, with tangible health consequences. Ultimately, this study contends that such restrictive legislation does not merely limit curriculum but actively contributes to a cultural and corporeal subordination of bodily autonomy. We will conclude by considering possibilities for resistance and the urgent need for educational approaches that foster sexual literacy, genital intelligence, and pleasure-affirming futures, despite the challenging political constraints.

This paper traces the journey of a UK-based early-career academic who has been reshaped by witnessing the ongoing destruction of Gaza and by engaging in dialogue with its scholars and educators. It argues that Gaza can serve as a moral and intellectual compass for all committed to social justice—reminding us that no pursuit of justice can stand apart from the struggles of the oppressed and centering their voices. Through two collaborative projects, the paper illustrates how global events can reconfigure scholarly identity, purpose, and practice.

The first collaboration interrogates the concept of scholasticism. While widely circulated in English-language research, the term is often confined to Western theoretical vocabularies. In Palestine, however, scholasticism is a lived condition, bound to the realities of siege, occupation, and survival. Working in dialogue with Palestinian colleagues, I moved from reading about scholasticism to listening to it—hearing what the term means within their everyday lives. Their narratives unsettled dominant academic framings, revealing forms of knowledge rooted in endurance, affect, and collective resilience, an epistemology unknown to Western Academia.

The second collaboration emerged during the current genocide in Gaza, where education persists under bombardment and displacement. Extending earlier research on educational continuity, I initiated a collective book project in which Gazan educators and families document learning amid devastation—through mobile classrooms, improvised teaching in camps, and symbolic acts of carrying books while fleeing. Their stories reveal that education is not merely instruction but survival itself.

In this presentation, I will share their stories, poems, and vignettes—their experiences, their attempts at being erased, and their insistence on life through learning. These narratives offer a compass for scholars everywhere: to shape and reshape ourselves as witnesses to the eradication of all that lies between land and sky, where education endures as the only living pulse of hope.

This case study explores how design education might offer hopeful, creative and affirmative ethical responses to educational practice in challenging times. Situated at a university of technology in Cape Town, South Africa, the research analyses a pedagogical intervention in which Masters of Design students and lecturers explore collaborative and innovative ways of decolonizing a text entitled "What is at Stake with Decolonizing Design? A Roundtable" (Schultz et a, 2018). The presentation will show how students' multimodal engagements with the text that include that include reading aloud, reflexive freewriting and artmaking troubled dominant western forms of expression that permeate learning and teaching discourse and practice. By resisting the dominant neoliberal higher educational culture that valorises speed and outputs, the collaborative practice of Slow Reading (Bozalek, 2023) provided an opportunity for students to critically engage with nuanced complexities and response-abilities that young designer face in shaping the word. While collaborative reading thickened understanding of issues around decolonizing design, the iterative reenactment of Schults et al.'s "roundtable" also uncovered how this seminal text neglects design practice in Africa. Identifying this gap in the literature reveals how multimodal collaborative engagement with texts can help transgress the Western academic canon which tends to prioritise the individual rather than the collective. Student' sharing of their lived experiences in relation to the text opened up a generative space for pushing thought beyond how the know the world and provided insights in to how education space can be activated differently.

Based on our own experiences as co-creative researchers, we aim to trouble dominant risk-aversive paradigms and crisis-prone imaginaries often put forward in institutional standards of research ethics and conduct. Rather than anticipating or ‘precautioning’ against indeterminate risks of harm and challenges that may occur in the field or later research stages, we argue for an opportunity-based, entangled ethics for co-creative research and related fields. Inspired by the agential realist approach of Karen Barad's feminist new materialism and other critical theories, opportunity-based ethics enables co-creative researchers to navigate and take advantage of the uncertainties that emerge in and through the dynamic (re)enactment of research relationalities for improved ethical and research conduct.

Narrating our own co-creative research experiences through the lens of entangled theories, we question standardized anonymization and privacy measures, enhanced informed consent protocols for ‘vulnerable’ research participants, and the anticipation of potentially ‘harmful’ influences before commencement of the research. In asking whom/what is 'safeguarded' by risk-aversive ethical standards, and for whose/which benefit, we propose three ethical principles: relationality, response-ability, and situatedness. These principles open up alternative ways of relating to the human, non-human, and more-than-human that intrinsically make up co-creative research entanglements, while taking seriously the in-situ collaborations and outcomes that unfold across various places and times. In doing so, we contribute to enhance research quality and data richness, as well as improved participant wellbeing and collaborative research benefits.

The discourse on development has often neglected its intertwined consequence on the environment. Mining activities have led to environmental crises and damaging consequences on livelihood and health of mining-affected populations. Highlighting the experiences of people residing in such a “space”, which is sensitive, inaccessible and inhabitable, the current study focuses on understanding how co-creating spaces of trust required the practice of researcher reflexivity. The field experiences from an ethnographic study on understanding the social determinants of health, of those who reside in close vicinity of mines in the state of Jharkhand, India are discussed. The process of “getting closer to a hard-to-reach community” necessitated practising critical reflexivity to address not only researcher’s vulnerability in navigating the field, but also negotiating the ethical dilemmas. Taking on Pillow’s (2003) framework on “uncomfortable reflexivity”, the messy nature of ethnographic field work is highlighted which can contribute to more ethical and insightful research.

As increasing numbers of veterans return home from deployment, the invisible wounds of war extend beyond the individual, shaping the moral, emotional, and relational lives of those closest to them. While post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among service members has been extensively studied, less is known about the moral and relational consequences experienced by their partners and families. Moral injury (MI), defined as the lasting psychological, social, and spiritual impact of perpetrating, failing to prevent, or witnessing acts that violate deeply held moral beliefs (Litz et al., 2009), offers a critical lens for understanding these experiences within family systems.

This qualitative study employed a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to explore how current and former partners of military service members with PTSD experience and interpret moral injury in the context of their intimate and family relationships. Guided by Gadamerian principles of interpretation and meaning-making, twenty participants engaged in in-depth, semi-structured interviews designed to elicit rich accounts of their lived experiences. The study was structured around three research questions: (1) How do partners experience and interpret morally injurious events within their relationships and family lives? (2) How do they make sense of the relational consequences of these experiences within their partnerships? and (3) How do they understand the ways morally injurious experiences shape family dynamics, roles, and identities within the family system?

Preliminary interpretation suggests that partners’ narratives reflect complex intersections of empathy, betrayal, guilt, and loss of moral coherence within intimate and family life. The findings aim to deepen understanding of how moral injury extends beyond the individual veteran to influence the moral fabric of family systems. This work contributes to a growing qualitative discourse that situates moral injury as a relational and contextual phenomenon, highlighting the need for family-centered, morally attuned approaches to support and intervention.

The practice of suicide tourism refers to the traveling of individuals to other countries to seek legally permitted assisted suicide. This study employed a descriptive qualitative research approach exploring how right-to-die organizations perceive suicide tourism and its implications on the right-to-die. The study included in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 activists from right-to-die organizations, as well as thirteen documents written by such organizations or related to the suicide-tourism phenomenon. Five themes emerged following the analysis of 12 in-depth interviews with activists from right-to-die organizations and 13 relevant documents: (1) unequivocal attitudes toward suicide tourism; (2) relationships between the organizations and the media; (3) acting to change the legal status of the right-to-die; (4) the role of the family in interactions between the organization and the person seeking assistance; and (5) reciprocal relations between the organizations and the physicians. The findings reveal ambivalent attitudes within such organizations toward suicide tourism, inherent tension among participating physicians, and complex relationships between assisted suicide, palliative care, and the physicians’ duty to promote individual choice at end-of-life.

This workshop opens with embodied stillness, attending to breath, gravity, and the sensory interface of skin and environment. From this initial attunement, participants are invited to consider how the body is always entangled within material, social, and environmental relations. The session examines movement in common as a site for cultivating relational awareness, sensitivity, and generosity between human and more-than-human presences. In the context of escalating global crises, it positions movement as a means of engaging with the urgencies of our time, offering embodied, dialogic strategies for fostering care and cooperation across difference.

Context and Rationale:

Movement-based research can actively and collaboratively engage people in shaping more liveable futures. Through embodied behaviours and tacit negotiations its relational and participatory nature is uniquely positioned to work across difference, language, and culture. This work choreographs connections between bodies by attending to relationships with the spaces and socio-cultural contexts around them, developing awareness of bodily borders and boundaries and collaborative working practices between humans and the material world that present opportunities to behave ‘otherwise’ (Akomolafe 2022).

Guided by new materialist (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, 2013) and post-qualitative approaches (Manning, 2016; St. Pierre, 2011), the workshop treats movement as an emergent, co-constituted process rather than a representation of fixed ideas. Bodies are not discrete, self-contained entities but dynamic nodes in a web of relations, constantly intra-acting with more-than-human presences that co-shape our experience.

Research Questions:

• What do we know through the body that cannot be accessed otherwise?

• How are tacit negotiations initiated and sustained across collective movement?

• How might embodied attunement offer tools for education, mediation, and civic dialogue?

• What can movement reveal about our shared vulnerability and interdependency with human and other-than-human worlds?

These provocations connect with the conference’s call to harness the strengths, synergies, and transformative practices that emerge in spaces of interconnectedness, shared vulnerability, and hope.

Workshop Structure:

The 90-minute session will unfold in two movements:

1. Inside – attuning and negotiating

We will work through relational movement scores that explore proximity, distance, shared rhythm, and collective decision-making. Participants will attend to micro-gestures—weight shifts, hesitations, accelerations—developing embodied awareness of the tacit negotiations that underpin collective life.

2. Outside – mapping relations in and out of place

The practice will spill into the streets of Athens, where participants will undertake embodied mapping—a mobile, sensory documentation of the city’s space-time mattering. We will notice how material surfaces, and temporal flows invite or disrupt movement. Using paper and pencil, participants will record textures and traces of relation. These experiential maps will then act as a blueprint score for a final group improvisation when we return inside.

Theoretical and Methodological Contribution:

The workshop aligns with the conference’s commitment to multimodal, experiential, and embodied ways of knowing. Rather than seeking closure or definitive answers, the workshop generates conditions for polyphonic dialogue and embodied sense-making, aligning with the conference’s aim to foster transformational change, rehearsing embodied ways of being and doing that gesture towards more inclusive and equitable futures in the present (Machado De Oliveira, V. (2021). The session contributes to a growing movement within qualitative research that embraces embodied, arts-based, and relational practices as vital tools for shaping the futures we will inhabit together.

Towards the end of the session, participants will be invited to submit their notes, drawings and documentary evidence to form an experimental embodied writing collective to valorise the session outcomes. We will explore experimental approaches to communicating and representing our lived experiences encountered in situ through digital AI. Exploring how to then respond to this virtual iteration in the material world we will consider where this speculative fabulation (Truman 2018) might take us as we engage in an iterative process in which live and virtual embodied experiences inform one another in an exponential loop.

References:

Akomolafe, B. (2018, June 18). The otherwise: What must we protect? Bayo Akomolafe Blog. https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/the-otherwise

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway. Duke University Press.

Braidotti, R. (2013). The Posthuman. Polity.

Machado De Oliveira, V. (2021). Hospicing modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. North Atlantic Books.

Manning, E. (2016). The Minor Gesture. Duke University Press.

St. Pierre, E. A. (2011). Post-qualitative research: The critique and the coming after. In Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research (4th ed., pp. 611–625). SAGE.

Truman, Sarah (2018) SF! Haraway’s Situated Feminisms and Speculative Fabulations in English Class, Studies in Philosophy and Education, no. 38, 31–42.

In this session, we aim to explore the notion of “collapse” and the potential it holds for qualitative research. We start by sharing moments of “collapse” (in four vignettes) taken from our own research, and invite participants to discover how we identified, lived, materialized and conceptualized “collapse” in various ways. Such moments of “collapse” were (i) found in material objects from ethnographic fieldwork, (ii) built into research design to evoke ideas for creative problem-solving, (iii) explored as a technique to unravel multiple meanings, stories and relationalities, (iv) chosen as an (unsolvable) task by a research participant to explore his own capacity to create.

Vignette: Yimin Zhang

An environmental volunteer found an abandoned bird nest in a local orchard. There is a fleck of orange fibres woven into the nest. Where could this orange color come from? There are no orange grasses or trees around. The volunteer told me: “[The colour comes] from the carpets of the neighbors. Here is the tradition, the carpets are tapped outside to remove the dust. And then birds come to pick the wool. They often have favourite colours. Here is orange. In the park there is a tit always taking only blue and violet. They have favourite colours, those tits.”

For me, this is a compelling example of how nature actively incorporates human traces into its own processes, creating a moment of collapse between ‘natural’ and ‘man-made’ and challenging the traditional dichotomy between human and nature.

Vignette: Anastasia Badder

‘Imagine Cambridge runs out of water by the end of the year’. Following a creative workshop bringing together water industry and water activists, an industry representative reflected: ‘occasional failures’ in water systems are typically framed as technical problems, explained to ‘customers’ in those terms, and generally accepted as such. But that day, responses went beyond what he expected in ‘strength and…anger’. Relationships with water are ‘not simply about the pipes and pumps’, he realized; they are as much about ‘life-giving properties’ and ‘emotional…and spiritual connection’; indeed, perhaps he experienced such connections outside the office. The challenge for the water industry is therefore ‘how to reconcile those…connections with the prosaic business of supplying water.

Vignette: Gabi, Anastasia, Yimin, Gog, Nia, Arshima, Salman

Colleagues from four continents agreed to an experiment and task. They looked at photographs around the access and use of water (such as (a) pouring water from a plastic or glass bottle, and (b) taking it from an open (natural) source). They were invited to perform these acts, if they could, and to later associate freely and write about their relationships with water. The same images of and around the use of water evoked meanings and questions of astoundingly different nature: “Is it free or constrained?” (Y); “Is it inside or outside of me? (Go); “Handpump or tap water: Does it matter for consumption?” (G) “Can you appreciate it if you never lacked it?” (N); “Does drinking from a glass – as opposed to a plastic container – grant you higher status”? “Is feeling the pain of environmental destruction real or just a discourse”? Images can be powerful tools in research and as devises “collapsing” multiple realities. Making the lines of implicit connections with those different realities, perceptions, and perspectives visible, can give methodological strength and stimulate new forms of exchange.

Vignette: Madelaine Wood

An artist engages with the task of ‘translating’ a poem into a different semiotic mode. He attempts to represent a chosen poem as a visual image. He puts himself to the test and attempts to find ways to represent two different temporalities (and contradictory modes of being – absence and presence – a person waiting and a person seeing another one arriving) in ONE single image. Putting two images next to each other is not an option, as he considers this “a (too) cheap trick.” He tries other ways of getting closer to his vision by using AI and trying out different prompts. Dissatisfied with the result and his (apparent) inability to solve the puzzle of un-collapsing the un-collapsible, he considers having exhausted his means, artistic energy, and resources and moves on to another poem.

Together with participants, we will discuss the potential of ‘collapse’ as a method to ‘think and feel beyond’ dichotomies (e.g. the human/non-human, Barad 2007), disciplinary boundaries, and the (un-)predictability in research design (Jackson & Mazzei, 2024), to build sensitivity for new emerging relationalities, perspectives and creative energies. We will create a canvas to document our collective thought process and keep a record of its outcome.

Summary

This Dream Teams Session will be led by Karin Hannes and Richard Siegesmund as we apply a tool, an Analytical Apparatus for Visual Imagery (AAVI), constructed from artistic models for formal visual analysis and developed in response to an increasing interest in visual research methods across disciplines in the fine arts and social sciences. Through this tool, researchers—particularly those who may lack the formal artistic skills for the deconstruction and analysis of visual images—can elicit a more robust descriptive language from participants and achieve a richer and more comprehensive analysis of visual images collected during participatory visual research such as photovoice or photowalk methods. In many projects that collect images, the role of images is often limited to either assisting participants in verbalizing their experiences or supporting a particular narrative story line evolving from the data. AAVI invites scholars to consider adding a compositional, tacit, layer of analysis to visual research based on the image's material intrinsic qualities.

For the 90-minute Dream Steams, we invite participants to bring visual images that they have collected in their research. For participants who are interested in learning about visual analysis, but do not have their own images, the session leaders will share images from their own research (Hannes & Siegesmund, 2022; Hannes & Siegesmund, 2024) showcased during the session .

Agenda for the session

0.00 – 10.00 minutes: Introductions

10.00 – 30.00 minutes: Introduction to AAVI applied to photovoice research.

30.00- 45.00 minutes: Participants attempt AAVI analysis with their own images.

45.00- 65.00 minutes: Share. Did AAVI produce new insights? How to push AAVI further.

65.00-75.00 minutes: Individual work further analyzing one’s image set. Pushing AAVI analysis deeper.

75.00-90.00 minutes: Final reflections, including possibilities for writing up insights gained for a future methodological paper

Rationale

Artistically inspired visual data, beyond photography, have been increasingly used in qualitative and creative research. This turn towards the visual image accepts that the researcher and participants are actively making the image, not simply recording an event (Riddett-Moore & Siegesmund, 2012).

This arts-based turn to the making of visual data raises two new problems in analysis. First, there is often more to the creation of an image than an illustration of predetermined semiotic or narrative meaning. Images emerge in complex and nonlinear ways (Manning, 2016). Second, many social scientists have never been formally trained in artistic creation; therefore, they do not have the proper skill set for creative analysis (Dierckx, Zaman & Hannes, 2022). Phillip Vannini (2015) argues for the need to develop non-representational methods in the social-behavioral sciences. In the case of the visual, we see this as pressing the distinction that John Dewey (1934) made between recognition and perception. Recognition is the categorization of semiotic representation. Perception is the aesthetic non-representational analysis of the felt phenomenological qualities that a visual image conjures (Siegesmund, 2012). Such interpretations require artistry.Non-representational level of data can be brought into language by researchers who are knowledgeable about visual art characteristics (Brown & Collins, 2021; Freedman & Siegesmund, 2024); Following Dewey, we argue that visual images can do more than just illustrate ideas or concepts. Images, through their relationships of tacit qualities, contain felt somatic meaning.

The Analytical Apparatus for Visual Imagery (AAVI) (Hannes and Siegesmund 2022) was developed to help social science researchers—particularly those who have not had formal training in the making of fine art images —to recognize the tacit qualities that shape the interpretation of a visual object, and bring them into the conversation with all image creators involved in a project and (where appropriate) the broader public.

References

Brown, N., & Collins, J. (2021). Systematic visuo-textual analysis. The Qualitative Report, 26(4), 1275-1290.

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. Minton Balch.

Dierckx, C., Zaman, B., & Hannes, K. (2022). Sparking the academic curriculum with creativity Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 22(1), 3-25.

Freedman, K., & Siegesmund, R. (2024). Visual methods of inquiry. Routledge.

Hannes, K., & Siegesmund, R. (2022). An analytical apparatus for visual imagery applied in a social-behavioral research. International Review of Qualitative Research, 15(2), 278–302.

Hannes, K., & Siegesmund, R. (2024). Presenting an analytical apparatus for visual imagery (AAVI) in socially engaged research practice. In H. Kara (Ed.), The Bloomsbury handbook of creative research methods (pp. 135-146). Bloomsbury.

Manning, E. (2016). The minor gesture. Duke University Press.

Riddett-Moore, K., & Siegesmund, R. (2012). Arts-based research. In S. Klein (Ed.), Action research: Plain and simple, (pp. 105-132). Palgrave.

This panel explores what it means to engage sound as a mode of inquiry within qualitative research. Drawing on projects in Canada, the United States, Norway, Spain, and England, the contributors examine how working with sound in studies of work, education, and the arts can unsettle habitual research practices and open new ways of being, knowing, and doing.

Across contexts, the panel asks how listening might reconfigure the ethics and epistemologies of qualitative research. Sound here is not treated as data or illustration but as a relational force that gathers bodies, materials, and meanings. From the sonic documentation of working lives to children’s experimentation with music technologies and performative collaborations across global and local contexts, the discussion traces how sound interrupts visual and textual hierarchies of knowledge. It engages with tensions between technical production and ethical care, between the sonic’s generative noise and the methodological decisions that attempt to contain it.

Methodologically, the panel spans audio ethnography, research-creation, performative inquiry, and postqualitative approaches. Participants employ field recording, sound manipulation, collaborative improvisation, and movement-based listening as analytic and creative tools. These practices are used to examine how sound mediates work and learning, and how it can expose the affective, material, and political dimensions of research relations.

Foregrounding sound as both subject and method, the panel invites audiences to listen to the friction between coordination and chaos, analysis and affect, listening and looking. In doing so, it asks what becomes possible when qualitative inquiry tunes itself to the vibrations of the world, when research becomes, quite literally, a matter of resonance.

Postfoundational Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry is an edited collection that provides a framing for these two panels. The book aims to move beyond a critique and deconstruction of method in order to present an engagement with various postfoundational frameworks and approaches that produce new concepts and enactments. What makes the contributions to the book unique, and the subsequent new papers generated for this conference, is the singular focus on postfoundational paradigms, borrowed from the humanities and sciences, that are enveloped in what is referred to as the ontological turn, the new empiricisms, and the new materialisms. Postfoundational inquiry in this context is conceived as emergent, relational, responsive, involuntary, and inventive.

In the original book, the editors invited authors to offer enactments as a way of reorienting toward what is unthought, not yet, and becoming. This “not yet” is that which happens “in the moment of sensing, thinking, reading, and writing in the production of the new” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2023, p. 5). These enactments are not bound to foundational assumptions in that they do not follow a predetermined method, nor do they attempt to represent traditional accounts of fieldwork. Furthermore, they do not aim to critique or deconstruct. Instead, they overturn and displace foundations not only by attuning to the contingency of what emerges, but also by decentering human agency in favor of prepersonal, affective encounters that are of the world.

In these two sessions, an orienting introduction will be provided to explain more fully the facets of postfoundational inquiry as emergent, relational, responsive, involuntary, and inventive. Contributors to these panels were invited to revisit their earlier writings and consider:

1. How is your current work aligned with postfoundational approaches?

2. What you learned, or how your work has shifted/extended from the chapter produced for the book?

The laboratory is not only a site for learning experimental skills and scientific production, but also a crucial space where scientific cognition and subjectivity are shaped. This study aims to explore how novice researchers in the laboratory form their scientific cognition and self-constitution through continuous interaction with frequently occurring non-positive results (experimental outcomes that are unexpected, inexplicable, or poorly reproducible).Challenging traditional views that treat the things and failures in experiments as passive objects or background, this study draws on Actor-Network Theory to re-conceptualize the lab as a dynamic assemblage woven together through the continuous associations and negotiations of human (i.e.,supervisors, peers) and non-human (i.e.,cells, instruments, non-positive results) actors.

We conducted in-depth interviews with 12 students from the School of Life Sciences in a leading Chinese university , combining with participant observation and analysis of material documents like lab records. By following the actors, we mapped the mutual trajectories of translation within this network.

The study finds that students initially experience non-positive results as a sign of personal inadequacy, leading to prolonged internal struggle.Through ongoing negotiation with a multiplicity of actors, both human and non-human, they gradually learn to reinterpret failure as a form of communication from material world that can provoke new questions. The re-shaping of cognition not only helps them develop practical strategies of trial-and-adjustment but also enables identity shift: translating from a controller who attempts to unilaterally master objects, into a coordinator who mediates between human and non-human actors. This process ultimately leads to demoralize failure and helps students redefine the boundaries of their agency by establishing a new world-relation: with the support of peers and through dialogue, to build a responsive and affective connection with a world they acknowledge as fundamentally uncontrollable. This study offers a new ontological perspective for understanding uncertainty, failure in science education.

What if empathy were fundamentally part of the world in its ongoing performativity? Understanding empathy as a complex multifaceted aesthetic phenomena, through which sense-making happens, opens it up to including non-human animals and material objects as well. Through affective flows and interfaces, not only are we capable of empathizing with non-human animals but also material objects. Drawing on Barad’s (2007) feminist posthumanism theory agential realism and multispecies ethics (Rose, 2012) this paper argues that empathy is a biologically innate, material-discursive practice through which all living creatures work toward biological order.

Empathy, foundational to all forms of life and interactions, has become a highly misconstrued, anthropocentric concept. But how, might you ask, could inanimate or non-human animals be connected to empathy? Through shared experience or energy embedded in their creation and form, empathy work in eliciting responses in helping us form meaningful relations with Others. In this case, empathy is done performatively, as something we do, not something we have.

This presentation features a series of short video artworks called antinarratives, designed to elicit more-than-human empathy through surprising encounters. These videos illustrate Batson’s (2019) eight types of empathetic behavior as they unfold in real-time, emphasizing how non-human agents contribute to empathy within entangled material and meaningful relations. Each piece immerses the viewer in empathetic behaviors, encouraging discussion as to how empathy arises beyond human-centered frameworks. The videos highlight how empathy is generated through dynamic interactions between humans and non-humans, presenting empathy as a relational and emergent process shaped by both material-discursive intra-actions and inter-species connections. Rather than excluding humans, the posthuman approach reframes our role as co-creators through empathy.

Positioned within the field of research-creation, this presentation explores multispecies climate fiction (cli-fi) as a speculative mode of inquiry that speculates-with other-than-humans. As a process-oriented and experimental praxis that integrates thinking, making, and doing, research-creation unsettles normative discourses and practices that restrict the possibilities of research and knowledge. Here, the use of artistic approaches is particularly directed at expanding understandings of knowledge-making. In this context, speculative fiction offers possibilities for building more affective and relational understandings, for example, regarding climate change.

The work presented here centers on the multispecies cli-fi story Canopy of the Hidden Alley, which emerged as part of a participatory workshop where city residents, artists, and scholars collectively imagined multispecies life in urban areas affected by climate change. Engaging creatively with participants' imaginaries, I developed the story as both a response to and an extension of their propositions. As such, the story is not a direct representation of the workshop findings, but a creative continuation, presenting a speculative exploration that embraces the multiplicity and complexity of the imaginative thinking and making processes. During the presentation, I will share parts of the the story alongside methodological reflections on research-creation and theoretical considerations of what it means to speculate-with other-than-humans in climate fiction.

The practice of speculating-with other-than-humans revealed the deep entanglements between human and other-than-human worlds, creating dialogue across species boundaries. Moreover, creative writing process uncovered new tensions and propositions that challenged and reshaped understandings of multispecies life in climate change, highlighting the emergent, situated, and responsive potential of speculative fiction as a mode of inquiry.

The increasing emphasis on speech and language in early childhood education (ECE) overlooks some of the complexities entangled within not-speaking such as environmental, microbial and affective relations which might be expressed in languages other than words. Drawing on multispecies encounters with nonlingual children, this presentation explores the potential of moving education beyond individual accountability and deficit models of human progress. By attuning to subtle registers of movement, atmospheres and sense-based ecologies, we become curious for onto-epistemologies that seem more relevant to the pedagogies and research of arts education in the post-Anthropocene.

We explore the tensions and fruitful connections arising at the intersections of arts and ECE through two cases: ‘artful sensing practices’ which are mobilised as nonlingual children experiment with multispecies movements (Churchill Dower, 2025), and multispecies research encounters with microbes in a forest (Hohti, 2024, unpublished). We attune to entanglements through inexpert experiments that help us to dismantle mastery, fostering multimodal, multisensory, and multispecies ways of knowing and challenging assumptions about differently capable bodies.

In this presentation, we pay attention to the heterogenous porosities, cracks, common worlds and alternative landscapes in multispecies inquiry that disrupt and enrich expectations of childhoods. We ask whether speculative methods and sensing practices might open more-than-human ecological spaces for creating new languages.

We propose that sensing languages enrich the more-than-human collaborations arising outside of the plan, after the event, in unsuspecting spaces and atmospheres, and can be seen as a necessary ‘ferality’ (Tsing et al., 2024, p.10), a modality vital for ‘ecologising’ ECE. In doing so, we shift the educational bullseye from knowledge acquisition to ways of knowing, and reconfigure arts education and childhood studies methodologies to foreground nested child ecosystems (Millei et al., 2025) in place of individuals as separate from environments.

In this paper, I explore and discuss relationships between human and more-than-human. I claim this concerns education in two ways. One is regarding the educational possibility of being addressed by the more-than-human, and the other is regarding care for future generations. To make this claim, I express and concretise such relationships through arts-based research in the form of creative writing, including a poem and two pieces of fiction. Starting from the idea that education is imbued with anthropocentric imaginaries and highlighting the more-than-human through the work of Haraway (2008), Curry (2008) and van Dooren (2007, 2009), I bring this further by connecting it to Biesta’s (2015b) work on the question of whether what we desire is actually desirable in education. Building on the work of Nisbet (1994) and Dewey (1916), this leads to a discussion of how progress, being central to education, needs to be renegotiated in order to become educational. In conclusion, I posit that, with a miseducated grasp and mastery of the world, human life is led to be continuously unfazed by the more-than-human face. But there is hope.

This paper explores the complex positionality of a researcher who shares cultural, gender, and educational backgrounds with research participants. Drawing on autoethnography (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011), this article focuses on how researchers balance empathy with maintaining their positionality in studying the mental health experiences of Chinese female university students. The article also reflects on the impact of positionality on data interpretation and meaning-making. This study aims to explore the ethical and methodological challenges that arise when personal empathy and research neutrality intersect, as well as the importance of reflective practice for maintaining positionality when researching sensitive topics.

This paper is a byproduct of my doctoral research. During my doctoral research, I found maintaining the positionality of a researcher challenging, especially when exploring sensitive topics such as participants' mental health experiences or experiences related to racism. Recognizing this, I approached myself as the research subject and, using autoethnography (Etherington, 2004), began conducting auxiliary research to identify appropriate methods for maintaining positionality. I carefully documented my reflections after each interview and also conducted psychological consultations, recording my insights immediately in my research notebooks (Anderson, 2006). These constituted my research data. The findings suggest that researcher identity and cultural context influence the co-construction of narratives (Adams, Holman Jones, & Ellis, 2015), fostering deeper connections while also introducing ethical complexities.

This article argues that positionality should be viewed as a resource for research, not a constraint. By integrating reflexivity and autoethnography, this study proposes an ethically sensitive framework for interpreting mental health narratives within culturally familiar contexts. This research also offers new insights into reflexivity, researcher identity, and methodological innovation in qualitative research.

This presentation adopts a co-autoethnographic approach in which we, as co-authors, reflect on our doctoral journeys as ethnic minority “outsiders” navigating a white, Western, neoliberal academic environment. Our positionalities as first-generation, self-funded female doctoral students from ethnically and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds shaped our shared struggles in negotiating academic culture, belonging, and career progression. Central to our narrative is the concept of peer generosity—the informal networks of solidarity, care, and shared values that sustained us throughout our PhD journeys.

While existing literature increasingly addresses inequalities faced by racial and ethnic minorities in academia, much of it focuses on those already in academic posts. Far less attention has been given to doctoral students aspiring to enter these spaces (Mattocks & Briscoe-Palmer, 2016). The PhD represents a critical threshold in academic pathways, where peer relationships can profoundly influence well-being, persistence, and identity development (Dericks et al., 2019; Williams et al., 2017). Although supervisory relationships are well-documented (Young et al., 2019), the informal peer networks that provide emotional and intellectual sustenance remain underexplored.

Our co-autoethnographic study draws on three years of recorded conversations and reflective journals, analysed through reflexive thematic analysis. This process allowed us to identify recurring themes of mutual support, cultural expectations, academic hierarchies, and the emotional labour embedded in peer mentoring. Through collaborative reflection, we illuminate how peer generosity countered institutional alienation and fostered resilience, empathy, and belonging.

By situating our personal experiences within broader systemic contexts, this presentation highlights the transformative potential of informal peer support among doctoral students. We argue that peer generosity offers a decolonial framework for reimagining academic relationships—one that values collectivism over competition and nurtures more inclusive, equitable spaces for marginalized scholars within higher education.

In this presentation, I explore my encounter with questions around “ownership” and “authorship,” and the contradictions that emerge from signifiers such as “I,” “we,” and “us” (Gale & Wyatt, 2016, p. 5), as I entangle my stories with those of my research participants. By assembling what Holman Jones (2016, p. 10) calls a “troubled we,” I examine a dialogical approach that explores mine and the participants’ narratives together, in order to inquire into a space that is shared yet marked by difference.

Further, I consider how autoethnographic writing—developed in response to particular encounters or moments of resonance within the interviews—can act as an opening that draws me back into the affective texture of the conversation. Placing these writings in relation to the interviews allows me to examine how meaning is negotiated, interrupted, and reconfigured between researcher and participant. These pieces do not seek to interpret the interviewee’s account but to consider how the researcher’s affective and reflective engagement shapes what the interview comes to mean, highlighting how self and other are mutually shaped through the research process.

I argue that this discontinuous and fragmentary mode of writing functions as a methodological tool for working with interviews. It allows the researcher to stay with moments of uncertainty, and tension rather than translating them into stable themes. This approach challenges the expectation that qualitative research should resolve ambiguity, showing instead how meaning and self are continually shaped through the act of writing.

This presentation builds on my ongoing autoethnographic project exploring the intersections of family history, race, and state policy in Australia. Drawing on the life story recounted by my grandmother, I trace the hidden histories of my maternal ancestors, revealing a family narrative that challenges conventional understandings of race, class, and belonging in Australian society. In July 2025, months after publishing my first paper on this topic, I conducted further archival research in Sydney, uncovering new records that illuminate the lived consequences of the White Australia Policy as both a legal framework and a racial project. The archival records I have uncovered over time reveal that my ancestors—stemming from an interracial marriage between a man from Canton, China, and a white woman born into extreme poverty—experienced forced family separation, with two generations of children removed from their parents and placed in institutions and foster care.

By situating the story of my family within broader frameworks of racial formation, this work highlights how state policies shaped—and often fractured—the lives of non-white Australians, including multiracial families whose histories were subsequently erased or sanitized in familial and public narratives. The presentation will reflect on the emotional labor and ethical considerations of uncovering family secrets through archival research, demonstrating how autoethnography enables both methodological rigor and narrative care while at the same time necessitating emotional resilience for the researcher. I also aim to illuminate how the sanitized, austere spaces of state archives—governed by public rules and rigid policies—create a challenging and emotionally charged context when one is tracing the very ways that same state harmed one’s own family. Finally, I hope to demonstrate the potential of combining family stories with archival evidence to surface hidden truths, complicate national myths of identity, and contribute to critical understandings of race, belonging, and policy in historical and contemporary Australia.

This paper is an invitation to explore what I have come to call creative-relational self-inquiry, a painful-playful process of self re-search which I engaged in for my doctoral thesis (Liwanag 2023). Building upon my use of writing as a method of inquiry (Richardson 2000) and autoethnography, and following the footsteps of those who believe in “the ‘creative-relational’ as a dynamic conceptual frame for vibrant, incisive research” (Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry 2023), I heeded the call of serious play (Mazzei 2007; Tudor and Wyatt 2023), where I learned the value of surrendering to anything and everything, trusting and believing that even not knowing, getting lost, falling apart and failing can become productive forces that give birth to new knowledge. In this process, which largely took place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I met my shadows at play and they soon became my re-search collaborators. With them, I discovered the power of Donald Winnicott’s (2016, 439) words – that in life’s “sophisticated game of hide-and-seek… it is joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found.” By showing you my shadow collection, handpicked photos that now adorn a wall in my bedroom, I allow you to take a peek into myself and my shadows, and the spaces between and within us, hoping that you will join us as we play.

This qualitative study explores the construction of professional identity among psychology students at a Greek public university through the framework of Dialogical Self Theory. Conducted during a professional identity development workshop, the research explored how internalized voices of significant others—originating from sociocultural contexts such as family, peers, educational environments, media, and dominant societal narratives—shape students’ self-positioning in relation to their choice to study psychology. Fifteen graduate psychology students participated by recalling impactful utterances from influential figures and representing these voices as internal characters engaged in an imagined dialogue around their career choice. These dialogues served as rich narrative data, reflecting the students’ internal meaning-making processes. Positioning Microanalysis was employed to examine the unfolding of internal dialogues. A first-step analysis included the identification of the agent (the internal speaker), the addressee (to whom the agent is speaking) and the inner audience (which other internal self-positions are listening to). Next, after identifying and labeling the micropositions, labels were aggregated into wider categorizations and micropositions were then grouped under mesopositions. Further interpretative developmental analysis revealed dialogical patterns such as internal conflicts, cyclical dynamics, the negotiation of authority, and the emergence of previously unvoiced or transformative I-positions. Preliminary findings indicate that professional identity is not a linear formation but a fluid, negotiated process marked by dialogical tensions and integrations. Voices representing familial expectations, societal pressures, and institutional discourses often conflicted with emergent self-authored voices, revealing both barriers to and breakthroughs in identity development. This study demonstrates the utility of idiographic, dialogical methodologies in examining internal multiplicity and emergent dialogical phenomena within professional identity construction processes. It further highlights the role of reflective narrative practices in facilitating the development of students’ professional identities.

After chugs of beer, sips of champagne, and tastings of wines

We turned our bottles over to see the poems we could find

We counted syllables, we borrowed the words

We wrote these poems as three mothers

As liquor danced on our palates,

And compliments spilled onto our pages

Penned poems personified in vino veritas

And became toasts to one another

Defining one’s positionality is essential to qualitative research work as a scholar's worldview, identity, and background guide and shape their research process; thus, identity work becomes a dynamic, ongoing construction and re-construction of one’s identity. For this study, three MotherScholars conducted qualitative research that utilized collaborative autoethnographic (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011), friendship (Tillman-Healey, 2003), and poetic inquiry (Faulkner, 2005) methodologies to collectively re-examine the implications and realizations of their shared MotherScholar identities. “MotherScholar” is an intentional stylization of the term originally coined by Matias (2011), a Pinay anti-racist scholar. The stylization signals an attempt to ease guilt and hardships associated with trying to balance two identities by accepting we are always “mom” and always “scholar” (blinded, 2020, p. 50).

This study was a conversation amongst friends, around a table, drinking wine, and writing found poetry as a vehicle to discuss the definition and experiences of MotherScholarhood to support better understanding of our shared identity within our personal/ professional lives – including what we perceive to be our identity, what we end up projecting to those we interact with, and who our dearest and closest scholarly friends recognize in us. This collaborative self-study assisted us in clarifying our positionality within our homes, classrooms, and research fields.

The paper will share selected found and inspired poems crafted by each of the MotherScholars – sonnet, haiku, and free verse – and discuss the process of found poetry from wine bottle labels.

This study centers the voices of Arab youth at risk in Israel (ages 18–25), who experience intersecting marginalities related to gender, age, socioeconomic status, and ethnic-national identity. Through dialogue, the study explores how youth perceive and navigate socio-political, cultural, and interpersonal risks. As a national minority facing opportunity gaps, governmental neglect, and heightened tensions - particularly amid war - these youth exemplify the urgent need to conduct research with and for marginalized communities, recognizing their agency and deepening understanding of the risk situations they face.

Guided by Emerging Adulthood theory and a Context-Informed Perspective, the study employs Grounded Theory methodology (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). Twenty-five Arab young adults receiving welfare services participated in semi-structured interviews on intersecting risks. I conducted interviews in Arabic, my native language and that of the participants. Data were transcribed, thematically coded, and analyzed using the constant comparative method, supporting the development of categories and theoretical linkages directly from participants’ narratives.

Findings revealed complex patterns of identity negotiation and risk perception. Participants navigated conflicting ethnic-national, local, and religious identities, with these challenges intersecting across three risk dimensions: interpersonal (family violence, neglect, isolation, anxiety, and loss of meaning), socio-cultural (gender restrictions, educational barriers, limited opportunities, weak support systems), and sociopolitical (community violence, institutional discrimination, limited trust in authorities, and language-based exclusion).

Listening to these voices builds context-based knowledge and highlights the urgency of designing social work interventions sensitive to both identity and structure. The findings demonstrate that identity and risk are closely linked, shaping ongoing cycles of vulnerability among Arab youth in Israel. These young people confront the dual challenge of personal growth amid a fraught political landscape. This research calls for social work practice and policy that integrate cultural context, promote equality, and foster practical interventions to strengthen resilience, especially during times of crisis.

What does fatherhood look like in the 2020s? How do men express themselves as fathers in an era saturated with images and expectations of what a man should be? Dad 2.0 – Identities in Motion is a visual journey into an interdisciplinary research project that explores the multiple meanings and representations of fatherhood in Finland. This qualitative study is part of a broader research initiative at the University of Eastern Finland: Religion, Meaning and Masculinities – Religion in the Lives of Men in Finland (Research Council of Finland).

Dad 2.0 combines qualitative methodology with a co-research approach and arts-based research. The project began with 24 fathers from diverse backgrounds—including nuclear families, divorced and single fathers, rainbow families, and immigrant fathers. Each interview began with a discussion about the participants’ everyday images of fatherhood, followed by a narrative interview and, optionally, a photographic portrait session with the researcher. In the end, eight fathers chose to be photographed, and several others shared personal images from their daily lives.

This presentation explores the multiple father identities and values expressed through these visual and narrative materials. The data highlights the diversity of fatherhood, the reshaping of identity and values, and the tensions between traditional gender roles and emerging forms of masculinity. Masculinity and fatherhood are no longer fixed categories—they are continuously negotiated in everyday life: between strength and vulnerability, pride and inadequacy, inherited traumas and new possibilities.

Based in pragmatism and post-structuralism, I explore how discontinuity is in itself already an enacted and embodied everyday curricular strategy. We sleep to avoid a stressful situation. We break a promise in order to avoid being penned in to a corner. We hide a part of our self to avoid ridicule. In other words, we use multiple selves to avoid the restrictions of a singular one. The self betrays the self. The self lives in a state of dis-integration.
Further still, I propose what pedagogies might look like based on disjunctions. Pedagogies of dis-integrations foreground and even create the gaps that allow for the self to become other. These pedagogies that values gaps will not measure or require fidelity to the original, but instead facilitate the (re)creation of newly relevant concepts, episodes, actions. Simultaneously, they will not require production from or translation of all modes to that of a singular “academic” (or discursive or productive) mode. These pedagogies aim to split the idea of the continuous lived experience and the integrated self. They embrace but does not require translations, in between zones, mixed modes, hybrids. These pedagogies ask, what can we do with gaps? And to answer that necessarily means looking at what we already do with gaps. How are we already escaping?

Background

At-risk young Arab women in Israel experience multiple layers of oppression resulting from their intersecting identities as members of Arab society, as part of an ethnic minority, as women, and as individuals living in situations of personal and familial vulnerability. Their marginal position shapes both their life experiences and how they view their future. Emerging adulthood is a key developmental stage marked by personal responsibility, decision-making, and forming a desired lifestyle. Research shows this period involves identity formation, setting life goals, and planning steps toward them. Future perception plays a central role in motivation and the ability to act toward goals. This study adopts a context-informed perspective that examines how sociopolitical, sociocultural, and interpersonal contexts shape future perception.

Methods

The sample included 30 Arab young women aged 18–29 identified as being in situations of risk and involved in formal support frameworks such as welfare services or civil-society organizations. Data analysis followed Strauss and Corbin’s grounded-theory approach, enabling exploration of the processes through which participants construct and interpret their perception of the future.

Results

The analysis revealed one overarching theme, “Constructing the Future as a Narrative,” encompassing four interrelated subthemes: “Between Overthinking and Avoidance,” reflecting tension between fear and hope; “Independent Personal Future,” focusing on autonomy and stability; “Future as a Space for Personal Repair,” emphasizing healing and self-recovery; and “Future as a Path Toward Social Justice and Repair,” highlighting transformation of pain into social contribution and collective change. Together, these subthemes portray the future as a horizon of hope, resilience, and transformation.

Implications

These findings highlight the need for context-aware interventions that foster autonomy, support goal setting, and strengthen coping capacities. By providing professional and social support, such programs can empower young Arab women at risk to overcome barriers and build safe, independent, and meaningful futures.

This Dream Team explores possibilities posed by writing and movement. It builds on our previous work on academic writing otherwise (Taylor et al., 2025; Taylor & Benozzo, 2023). In considering writing’s movements as a multiplicitous connectivity of physical-affective-sensuous-materialities, we hails new writing imaginaries into becoming through movement. We are interested in writing and movement, writings’ movements, on the moves writing might make, and on how writing moves us.

Theoretically, we are inspired by Deleuze’s question: ‘It is a question of producing within the work a movement capable of affecting the mind outside all representations; it is a question of making movement itself a work, without interposition ... of inventing vibrations, rotations, whirlings, gravitations, dances or leaps which directly touch the mind’ (Deleuze, 1994: 8). We work with this to enact posthumanist feminist materialist praxis that sets bodies, hands, thoughts in motion to imagine and do writing differently and, via this, to devise new ways of doing qualitative research.

We invite Dream Team participants to enact movement in various ways, forms and modes: physically, affectively, sensorially. The smallness of the movement doesn’t matter – it's what the movement does and enables i.e. writings’ disruptivities– that matters.

Writing’s movements are felt in hands and skin, in-on bodies-hearts-minds. Remembering to learn to write as children, our mothers’ hand holding ours and moving our hands to shape letters. Perhaps we recall learning to write as a form of regulation: marching unruly letters into ordered obscure sentences – learning to write in the right way. And the physicality of writing: holding a pen/pencil correctly; writing so much you get a hard bump (a callus) on the middle finger! Alternately, now, using fingers to type may make our hand-writing feel laborious, and the words on the page seem clumsy and not ours. We may also ponder generational styles of writing: cursive/ cursivo/ kaunokirjoitus.

We invite participants to engage in four hot spots (punto nevralgico) and a collective writing activity to explore and co-create the potentialities of writing’s movements, how the many folds of writing’s movements put our bodies in motion; and how micro-movements and micro-sensings traverse and shape us and/as the writing.

Our four hotspots:

Physical movement has become part of many scholars’ research practices, for example via walking methodologies (Springgay & Truman, 2018; Taylor, 2020; Walking as Research Praxis, 2025). Moving is not only a somatic entangled assemblage of human and non-human relational bodies, it also includes “the affective, the political, the institutional, and the biological” (Shildrick, 2015, p. 18). At this hotspot we invite you to write in movement heterotopia (Foucault, 1967), where writing spaces are made from layers of meaning and/or relationships to other places.

Do bodies write their stories with the shadows they cast, as statements of our always relational and always unfolding positionality? How are shadows writing themselves into our bodies? How is the world writing itself onto us, with us, without us through movement and shifting light-object formations? Like ancient monuments built to create symbolic visual effects during astronomical events, this hotspot is an invitation to think/engage/move/write with shadows and light to explore writings happenings in more-than-human ways, as a dance and immanent choreography that calls forth shapes, patterns, contours, colours.

Writing’s body movements. While we write, the legs move, the lungs breathe, the eyes shift between the computer keyboard, the fingertips touch pencils and keys, the organs produce sounds, the heart beats, the blood flows. The head sways. In a calm that is only apparent, the body writes, moves, and makes noise. The body grows tired; the organs grow excited. This hotspot is an invitation to produce thoughts on the body that moves-writes. It is an invitation to imagine what space we can give, in research, to the movements of the flesh.

How do we write without words? What happens when we try to? Is it possible? Or, what else becomes possible? There are forms of writing which don’t rely on words. Boone & Mignolo (1994) discuss how alternative forms of writing were destroyed by colonisation, rendering hieroglyphic, pictorial, and coded systems of writing invisible and ‘primitive’. This hotspot invites participants to refuse the colonial gaze of writing by writing-moving without words, and to make marks/write with images, drawing, paint, and found materials other than pen or pencil.

Alongside the hotspots, participants are invited to a collective writing activity that aims at imagining-inventing an alphabet that is unrecognizable and nonrepresentational. How might we communicate in new ways through new individual-collective marks as they appear, materialize and do things on paper.

In an era of global changes and mental health challenges, qualitative researchers strive to reflect the emerging realities in their areas of inquiry. In my doctoral research, I used the concept of relational space, which includes human and non-human elements, verbal and non-verbal interactions, emotions, embodied responses... and more. The exploration of relational space also takes into consideration the environment and systems in which we live and function. As a systemic practitioner researcher, I explore the intricate interplay of the relational space that emerges in the conversation between client and therapist and the relational space of the different voices that emerge within the therapist. Through the use of reflexive writing, I focus on the relational conversation between my client and myself, as well as my inner dialogue and thoughts and feelings. In a way, I create a professionally employable space for the personal. The collaborative dialogue between these relational spaces creates relational ripples, which in turn open up possibilities and generate transformative practices in the psychotherapy process.

In this Dream Team session, participants will have the opportunity to engage in experiential exercises to explore the relational space in therapy, both the relational space between client and therapist and within the therapist. They will experiment with ways of using reflexive writing as a methodological tool, applicable and useful to practitioners who need to respond to current mental health challenges. Through the use of reflexive writing and collaborative discussion, participants will deepen their understanding on the impact of their own relational space in the therapeutic encounter and how the interconnectedness of relational space between client and therapist and within the therapist encourages collaboration and dialogue in the therapy room. In the end of the Dream Team session, participants will produce a collective writing, which will reflect the joint efforts of the team to create relational ripples and will showcase the interconnectedness of our relational spaces.

In the last few decades, psychobiography has moved away from its sole identification with psychoanalytic inquiry and toward the adoption of other psychobiography lenses. The narrative turn in psychology and the renewed interest in the analysis of life stories have encouraged several psychobiographers to associate their work with the wider field of narrative inquiry. Our psychobiography research group studies the lives of authors, artists, and scientists of the late 19th and early 20th century using first-person narratives and works of art (letters, diaries, notes, autobiographies, early memories, interviews, self-portraits) as our primary data to answer intriguing questions. These questions have clinical relevance since psychobiography cases can be seen as case studies of “complete lives”. Our aim is to gain insight into our ‘subjects’ struggles in resilience rather than pathology, feed our clinical insights, and teach trainee therapists narrative methods of inquiry. Papers in this panel will present a case for using psychobiography to teach narrative inquiry methods, and will also present three specific examples of using such methods to conduct and publish psychobiography research.

What does a white male rock-and-roll star born in Freehold NJ have in common with a female Chicana scholar and mystic living along the Mexican American border? Everything. It sounds unlikely but there are connections to consider and reasons why considering these connections should matter to us. This proposed paper intersects the visionary shamanic and aesthetic ideas of the scholar Gloria Anzaldúa (2015; 1987) with the visionary language of Bruce Springsteen’s album Born to Run (1975) and how interweaving their work addresses the “... synergies, creativities, transformative practices, hopes and possibilities ... “ of our collective futures (ECQI Call for Proposals). The presenter explores sites of resistance and hope shared between a disenfranchised working class riding down the broken highways like the characters in Springsteen's album Born to Run and the communities living in the liminal shamanic borderlands of Anzaldúa’s praxis. Both Anzaldua and Springsteen highlight a need for spiritually-adjacent aesthetic experiences that bridge divides between individuals/groups and foster belonging in our shared “interconnectedness, our shared vulnerability, and our interdependency with human and other worlds“ (ECQI Call for Proposals).

How can we shift (or disrupt) the binaries that limit our individual and collective realities without losing what matters? This presentation emphasizes how liminal spaces of fiction, storytelling and metaphor as qualitative modes of inquiry are necessary elements of resistance. Anzaldua refers to this spiritual inquiry through artmaking as conocimiento (2015, p. 142). Session participants will discuss song lyrics and scholarly passages alongside each other and consider how metaphoric, artistic, and literal border-crossing ‘conjures’ communal acts of shared futures that enable us to shape-shift and reconnect with human and nonhuman worlds.

References

Anzaldúa, G. (2015). Light in the dark. Duke University Press.

Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderland/La Frontera. Aunt Lute Books.

Springsteen, B. (1975). Born to run [Album]. Columbia Records.

This paper presents findings from Growing Up in the Market (GUIM), a three-year qualitative longitudinal study conducted as part of a research partnership between Queen’s Communities and Place (QCAP) and the Market community in inner-city Belfast. GUIM followed 61 participants across four generational cohorts—children, young people, young adults, and parents—through three waves of interviews (2022–2025). Our aim was to explore how community context shapes health, wellbeing, education and employment over time, and to explore the impact of our academic partnership. As such, this is an interdisciplinary project drawing on sociology, community psychology, and educational research. Its multigenerational design offers a relatively rare yet highly valuable lens through which to understand the dynamics of community life and change over time.

We will present narratives collected revealing three overarching themes: tensions of belonging and exclusion, collective action in response to adversity and asserting ambition(s) despite constraints. Across generations, participants emphasised pride, attachment, and solidarity, even as they spoke of stigma, precarious living conditions, and the intergenerational legacy of conflict. Education emerged as an act of resistance through which families sought to assert ambition, dignity, and possibility despite constraints. These findings were interpreted within the life course paradigm, highlighting how individual, family, and community trajectories intersect with wider structural forces across time.

Further we reflect on the approach itself and how, rapport built over repeated interviews developed trust and, at times, blurred the boundaries between researcher and participant impacting the data collected. We also discuss what this data suggests about the powerful potential of community-led interventions—from substance-use evenings to arts-based projects. In attending to the voices of children, young people, and families, the study foregrounds how hope, endures—even in precarious worlds and how communities under pressure resist deficit narratives and cultivate futures with persistence.

In this presentation, the author will present a paper that weaves autobiographical anecdotes with translanguaging theory to illustrate what educators can do, in their classrooms and everyday practice, to counter the deficit-oriented discourses and ideologies circulating about immigrant and/or multilingual learners. The author will begin by reflecting on her own translanguaging identity and life as a translanguager in primarily monoglossic spaces. She will then discuss alternative, heteroglossic understandings of language that seek to disrupt and counteract dominant and damaging monoglossic ideologies and perspectives, acknowledging the difficulty of such a task in the current sociopolitical climate in the United States. Finally, the author will invite attendees to explore their own linguistic and cultural identities and roots and engage in dialogue about the educational practices and policies that facilitated or stifled the development of their multilingualism as well as how the present realities in which they currently operate are similar and/or differ. Together, the author and attendees will discuss how educators can go about creating expansive, heteroglossic, translanguaging spaces that cultivate and nurturing students’ translanguaging instincts by discursively pushing back on larger monoglossic ideologies while also protecting ourselves in the current sociopolitical climate.

In today’s challenging times, resistance to managerialist and marketised education systems (Ball, 2019) remains problematic. Tools to counter fixed and ossified structures are few, whilst time and space for reimagining leadership are hard to find. As global market matters (policy, language, technologies) advance human performativity (Sidebottom, 2019), liberating leadership with embodied methodologies for the unintentional may be useful to subvert dominant operations and advance possibilities elsewhere.

This presentation embraces the transformative practices of art making with education as embodied, material, post-qualitative and post-human becomings (Fairchild, Taylor, Benozzo et al, 2022) for the unintentional and novel. Ways of making methodologies as soft materialisms will showcase the generative possibilities of material intra-inter-actions of bodies-non-bodies (Barad, 2017). These bring into question how hyper feminine objects activating multi-sensory knowledges may reposition commodified management structures. Further, softly visualising hierarchies of patriarchal language are seen to produce the previously unimagined, unknown and unintentional in acts of resistance. These art methods and materials perform a gentle approach to developing critical and self-reflexive leadership and softly contributes to the expanding field of possibilities (Glăveanu, 2023), post-qualitative studies and feminist new materialist inquiry (Braidotti, Coleman and van der Tuin, 2024).

Moreover, a view on the public dissemination of exhibition that invites intentional-unintentional audiences to bring their leadership-non-leadership bodies into art spaces for reimagining education will be shared. These lead us to consider how collective, embodied material acts as assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) perform further disturbances to orient education leadership differently. In the pause until these methodologies for resistance are widely adopted, the transformational inter-intra-play of bodies-making-education matters can be understood to take leaders somewhere else in the hope of a better world.

This presentation draws from an ongoing inquiry between the two authors about feminist ethics and collaborative scholarship in the academy. Together, we have asked “How do we live a ‘good’ life in the academy?”, and “How might feminist theory provoke questions about this life?” In this paper, we consider authorship practices as a cluster of factors implicated in the mundane environment of academic life, what Berlant (2011) might describe as a scene of ‘slow death’. We enter into collaborations with pre-defined scripts about what constitutes authorship, and what this entails. These scripts are part of a cluster of factors: citation metrics, author order and logics of production and scarcity that obscure the relational, ethical, generative aspects of collaborative scholarship. In our own academic practices, we have wrestled with these questions of authorship. We have noticed how conversations and assumptions about authorship reflect and produce particular geometries of power and structural conditions. In this presentation, we put Berlant’s theorization of slow death in conversation with the work of adrienne maree brown (2017) and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s (2015, 2024) writing on scarcity logics to think about how co-authorship might serve as both a site of tension and an opening for interference in academic economies. We situate our inquiry within our own stories of navigating authorship as feminist scholars positioned simultaneously as mentors, colleagues, and co-authors with one another, as well as with students, etc. We open up authorship as a question, something relationally negotiated that ebbs, flows, and shifts in response to needs and situations. As we do this, we find that these questions have implications for how we think about qualitative methodology and pedagogy. In other words, to ask about authorship, is to ask how we want to live and relate separately-together in the academy.

There is an urgent need to promote scientifically literate individuals who possess knowledge and skills in science to thrive in these scientifically advanced yet globally challenging times (Sjöström et al., 2023). This paper discusses the development of scientifically literate British women who left science education in their teenage years but have returned to learning scientific knowledge and skills in middle-aged phases of life, to address their personal needs and professional demands in science learning. We are focused on the under-researched group of women between 35-65 years (Etaugh & Bridges, 2013) because, although this age group comprise the largest percentage of the overall British population, they are highly underrepresented in the science fields (British Science Association, 2020). Drawing on the theories of transformative learning in adults and scientifically literate identity development, we have conducted semi-structured interviews with our participants, these interviews were analysed using narrative and thematic analysis, highlighting (i) how and why our middle-aged women participants re-engage with science learning, (ii) they develop scientifically literate identity, that (iii) intersects with their other identities, such as being middle-aged women. Our key findings reveal the importance of (i) emotions, including self-determination and self-efficacy belief, in passing through the liminal transformative tunnel of becoming a scientifically literate person, (ii) informal means of learning, including smart devices, (iii) assimilating, accommodating and refuting scientific information and misinformation to survive in the scientifically demanding personal and professional environment. We suggest that more research and practical implications be explored to support the development of scientifically literate adults.

References:

British Science Association (2020). APPG on Diversity and Inclusion in STEM. https://www.britishscienceassociation.org/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=d7899dce-22d5-4880-bbcf-669c0c35bda6 [Accessed 02.10.2025].

Etaugh, C. A., Bridges, J. S. (2013). Women's Lives: A Psychological Exploration. United Kingdom: Pearson.

Sjöström, J., Yavuzkaya, M., Guerrero, G. & Eilks, I. (2024). Journal of Chemical Education 101 (10), 4189-4195. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c00452.

In the Muslim world, there is a slow but powerful movement happening amongst men who are challenging the negative stereotypes which depict them as abusive, misogynistic, and violent. Instead, these men are actively involved in gender justice initiatives and violence against women (VAW) prevention. This article presents findings from Qatar’s portion of our international study on Muslim Masculinities. Grounded in a Transformative Learning (TL) theoretical framework (Brookfield 2012), the study includes qualitative interviews with Qatari men, exploring their motivations for engaging in VAW prevention and gender justice initiatives. The findings underscore key life trajectories shaping men's perspectives on gender justice and VAW prevention, such as: (1) Family legacies and generational impacts, (2) Sense of personal responsibility for sisters, (3) Positive influences of religion on participants, and (4) Transformation within small social circles. These findings have important implications for policy development in Qatar and beyond, highlighting the need for VAW prevention strategies that engage men as allies within their cultural and religious contexts, leverage existing traditional social structures, and emphasize grassroots, community-based change over top-down systemic reform.

What happens to qualitative data when it travels—geographically, culturally, and linguistically—beyond the context in which it was first produced? This paper explores the generative potential of such movement through my participation in thel Many Minds data-analysis group held at the University of Susses, UK. As part of this collaborative series, I shared two interview excerpts and a reflective fieldnote from my PhD research on mother–young adult daughter relations in marginalized communities in Israel, originally collected in Hebrew and later translated into English for the group.

Drawing on Lorenzer’s (1986) concept of the scenic, I examine how these narratives were heard, felt, and re-interpreted by a multicultural group of scholars. The group process included emotional, associative responses, and line-by-line reading, creating a space where my own interpretations were both expanded and unsettled. The emotional and embodied reactions of others opened up fresh interpretive possibilities, revealed blind spots, and reframed taken-for-granted assumptions about young adulthood, gender, marginality, and intergenerational ties.

Rather than seeking a single consensus or “final” meaning, the Many Minds process embraced multiplicity and tension. In doing so, it generated insights that speak not only to the specific narratives of Israeli young women and their mothers but also to broader questions of researcher subjectivity, translation, and the ethics of working across difference.

This paper demonstrates how collaborative, transnational data analysis can function as a form of dialogical knowledge-making—illuminating how globally circulating data can foster deeper reflexivity, produce more nuanced interpretations, and contribute to transformative qualitative inquiry in challenging times.

I would like to tell you a story. A story about Madness and memories lost. A story about being silenced, being alone and stuck in the moon-shadow. It is a true story about a girl, who was deemed Mad and treated as such, but later wrote a book about her experience. The book connected her to a group of people, people who read, people who had also suffered. People who had no voice, but felt as if she was speaking for them; as if they were now a little bit less alone.

In spite of all the people who thanked the girl, in spite of her realizing that she indeed had given voice to many, she felt more alone than ever. She wanted to understand. So she set up on a journey. She returned to the ivory tower, where she had before explored Fine Arts, and knocked now on a different door. The door to Academic Research. To Mad Studies.

Through the methods of qualitative inquiry, the girl called out to others. Others who had also been deemed Mad, but refused to stay silent. People who had written books, books about Madness and becoming whole, in spite of it all. In joy she gathered them around her and asked: How did it feel to tell your story? Why did you do it? What did it change? And she listened to their voices, she listened and she felt, and she thought, and she tried to understand.

The girl is I. I invite you to come and listen to the story of the stories. The story of how, through my reserach, through other peoples‘ stories, I became myself. A little bit less alone, than before.

The LEAP (Little Explorers And Parents & families) project offers a movement- and arts-based intervention for pre-school children in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas in the UK. Developed by a ballet company (Northern Ballet) and building on creative adaptations made during the COVID-19 pandemic, the project fosters physical, cognitive and social development through music, storytelling and multisensory play. A qualitative evaluation was undertaken to explore its implementation and potential for wider application in early years (EY) settings.

Flexible, context-sensitive methods were used to generate data with key actors from five preschools in the north of England. Methods included: interviews and written reflections from EY practitioners; observations and informal conversations with children; and WhatsApp interviews with parents. Visual data, such as photographs, supplemented narrative accounts. Efforts to involve parents/carers revealed key methodological challenges; despite multi-modal recruitment, only two parents took part and both demonstrated limited awareness of the LEAP project.

A relational evaluation framework underpinned the analysis, focusing on interactions between children, practitioners, families and the creative materials. Findings highlight the importance of trust, co-creation and embedded practitioner relationships in enabling meaningful engagement. Small group work and accessible resources supported participation, while space constraints, staff absence and language barriers limited implementation in some contexts.

This study illustrates the methodological value of adaptive, relational approaches in researching arts-based interventions within EY settings. It raises critical questions about whose voices are heard and how engagement is negotiated in under-resourced, culturally diverse communities. In challenging times, such as post-pandemic recovery, the co-construction of knowledge with practitioners and children becomes central to understanding impact and informing scale-up. Future research must continue to embrace flexible, inclusive methods that recognise the complexity of working with young children and families across diverse settings.

As arts-based research (ABR) in the social sciences has evolved over the past 30 years, it has taken on multiple forms, methods, and interpretations (Wang et al., 2017). This paper examines the concept of scholartistry, a term first coined by the Canadian poet and scholar Lorri Neilsen (1998), and expanded through three editions of Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2008, 2018 and forthcoming, with the third edition being released concurrently with the ECQI conference). As developed through the three editions, scholartistry calls for both a deep knowledge of one’s disciplinary base within the social sciences as well as proficiency of a specific and/or multimodal art practice. Additionally, scholartistry is profoundly rooted in the American Pragmatism of John Dewey and William James (Capps & Capps, 2005) with its commitment to discover what we do not yet know in order to make our social life better. Profoundly, this quest for broadening circles of clarity is driven by attention to and the application of tacit knowledge (Polanyi, 1967) in the process of inquiry.

John Dewey, in Art as Experience (1934) referred to the analytic engagement with the tacit realm of experience as thinking in “relations of qualities” (p. 46). Furthermore, Dewey insisted that such qualitative reasoning was distinctly different from thinking in terms of linguistic, mathematical, or even visual symbols.

The distinction between thinking in linguistic and visual symbols (with their attendant structures of metaphor and metonymy) and thinking in the tacit realm of the relationship of qualities is the essential feature of scholartistry and how one would identify a scholartist work of ABR from a symbolic ABR analysis. To support this distinction, visual examples from recent ABR will help clarify the added level of analysis that attention to tacit qualitative reasoning in images might provide.

In this paper, I present artistic research I have carried out with a group of learning-disabled artists, who have existed as a collective for over four decades, collectively known as The Professors. Methodological literatures often present participation and disability inclusion in research in idealised ways, as though if offers an easy resolution to power and oppression. Paradoxically, idealised rhetorics about inclusion may conceal and reinforce old hierarchies (Ahmed, 2012). For instance, it is often assumed that collaborative research involves selecting and sticking to one unified inquiry, which Gallacher and Gallagher (2008) call an ‘adult norm’ of linear research. I argue it is also a neoliberal-ableist one (Goodley, 2018). In this project, I have sought to collaborate with The Professors flexibly and fluidly, allowing multiple fragmented strands of unfolding knowledge production to emerge through their artistic practices, in which such approaches are well-established. The research draws on research-creation - which centres the artistic process (Loveless, 2019) – and ethnographic methods, demonstrating how methodologies embedded in The Professors’ established creative practices generate insights into anti-ableist participatory approaches. Through presenting examples of these creative practices, I show how they resist established norms of academic knowledge production, including idealised concepts of co-production, and offer radical anti-ableist alternatives. However, I will contrast these radical, creative moments with the examples which illustrate the tensions and contradictions that emerge from attempting to do this sort of anti-ableist participatory research from within an neoliberal higher education institution, which are not easily overcome or resolved.

Reference List

Gallacher L-A and Gallagher M (2008) Methodological immaturity in childhood research? Thinking through ’participatory methods’. Childhood 15(4): 499–516.

Goodley D (2018) Dis/ability Studies: Theorising disablism and ableism. Routledge.

Loveless, N. (2019). How to Make Art at the End of the World: A manifesto for research-creation. Duke University Press. https://www.dukeupress.edu/how-to-make-art-at-the-end-of-the-world

This paper introduces a study situated at the intersection of multispecies childhood research and new materialism-oriented art education research. As part of a broader research project examining children's and young people's multispecies relations in the age of ecological crises, I had the opportunity to explore the everyday life of a children's and youth art school in Southern Finland. I examined how children's relationships with other species—and broadly speaking, with other nature—materialized during the meetings of art school groups.

In this paper, I present two dimensions through which I explored the multispecies relationality in the art classroom. On one hand, other species entered the art educational situations through representations and stories: as subjects of artistic work, as visual imagery and objects in the classroom, and as narrated stories. On the other hand, relationships with other species, objects and forces were already present, as continuously co-emerging tapestry of everyday life. This affective dimension, however, felt hard to grasp, as it seemed as a blurry ‘background’ eluding attention.

Finding ways to attune to the affective relationality beyond the explicit pedagogical context and other ‘foreground’ layers of the situation challenged me as a researcher to engage in methodological experimentation. Inspired by Linda Knight's (2021) protocol of inefficient mapping, I developed a method of affective movement mapping through drawing, which allowed me to attune to the affective encounters, rhythms, and intensities in the art classroom.

Through examples, the paper illustrates how this experimental method revealed art education situations as vibrant assemblages of diverse tempos and rhythms of movement, where the touches of hands, materials, and tools are central, and through these encounters, new stories and representations of multispecies relationality emerge.

Arts and science are often seen as dichotomous, opposites. In relatively conservative fields like business and management, endeavors that draw on creativity and emotion are treated as distinct from those relying on rigor, and reason. But what happens when scientific prescriptions, methodological templates and academic conventions do not satisfactorily facilitate our attempts to theorize and represent the worlds of our research participants? I am not an experienced arts-based scholar, nor a particularly talented artist, I am afraid. However, last year I had a serendipitous encounter with ethnodrama, a specific genre of dramatic literary writing, and analytic approaches associated with it, that opened up for me possibilities for knowing, sensing and writing that the traditional methodologies could not accommodate. In this essay, I reflect back on my recent experience with ethnodramatic analysis and writing, and its reception in the review process. I aim to argue about the potential of ethnodramatic analysis and writing to facilitate theorizing ‘that’s moving’, referring on Weick’s (1999) notion of ‘moving’ theories, i.e. ‘theories that affirm the heart’ or in other words, theories that have emotional resonance (p. 140).

Artificial intelligence (AI), often celebrated as an engine of progress, is implicated in the escalating planetary crises of climate breakdown, mass extinction, democratic erosion, and widening inequality (McQuillan, 2022). Far from immaterial, AI relies on infrastructures of energy, water, minerals, and labor that intensifies ecological collapse and global dispossession (Crawford, 2022). Each interaction with AI is tethered to extractive chains that accelerate “slow violence”—the gradual, dispersed harm that unfolds across generations and borders (Nixon, 2013).

Once mediated by AI, qualitative inquiry, often framed as small-scale, relational, and human-centered, becomes entangled in the extractive systems it might otherwise resist. That is, the slow violence of AI is not external to our work but an intensifying condition shaping who speaks, who is silenced, and whose suffering is rendered (in)visible. For qualitative researchers, these realities raise urgent ethical challenges. Institutional ethics frameworks, dominated by procedural compliance, cast AI as a neutral tool (Bennett, 2025), a narrow view that risks reproducing colonial logics of extraction, where infrastructure remains invisible and unexamined until it breaks down (Star & Ruhleder, 1996).

In this paper, we theorize slow violence as both an ethical and representational problem for qualitative inquiry, performing an infrastructural inversion to expose AI’s technical and epistemic systems (Bowker, 1994). We ask: What does it mean to produce knowledge through systems complicit in environmental and social harm? What kinds of subjects are we becoming when our methods rely on extractive infrastructures? Confronted with these questions, researchers may be tempted to disavow the violence that enables convenience, feeling shame, ambivalence, or resistance in the face of complicity. Rather than seeking resolution or denial, we reimagine research ethics as a practice of dwelling within these tensions, acknowledging complicity, foregrounding entanglement, and cultivating modes of inquiry that strive toward responsive care (Raffaghelli et al., 2025).

This qualitative study explores primary school teachers’ reflective experiences following the implementation of an intervention in six Grade 4 classrooms in Greecefocused on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and integrated Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) strategies, delivered an AI-enhanced Learning Management System (LMS) traditional printed materials.The core instructional focus SEL competencies—including self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship, and responsible decision-making—while SRL strategies were explicitly taught and embedded within the flow of learning activities, enabling students to apply goal-setting, self-monitoring, and emotional regulation during their engagement with SEL content. Teachers participating in both modalities documented their post-intervention reflections in structured journals, offering rich narratives about their pedagogical choices, classroom interactions, and the evolving role of technology in supporting emotionally meaningful and cognitively self-directed learning. Through a thematic analysis of these reflective accounts, the study how teachers conceptualized the integration of AI in SEL practice, how they navigated the co-teaching of emotional and metacognitive skills, and how their own professional perspectives were shaped by the process. ituated within the theoretical frameworks of the CASEL model for SEL and Zimmerman’s theory of SRL, interplay between affective and regulatory dimensions of learning. Emerging teacher reflections indicate pedagogical value both implementation settings, with the AI-supported environment student engagement, emotional expression, and autonomous learning. study contributes to ongoing discussions around ethically grounded technology integration, reflective teaching practice, and innovation in emotionally and cognitively rich learning environments.

This qualitative study explores psychotherapists' lived experiences and perceptions of engaging with generative AI in a simulated therapeutic context. Employing an exploratory research design, we conducted a simulation where three systemic family therapists participated in role-play sessions with ChatGPT, which was prompted to act as a therapist. Participants adopted the roles of a client from a fictional distressed couple with a child, directing the conversation based on a provided scenario. Following the simulation, we conducted in depth interviews to understand their personal experiences as role-playing “clients” as well as their professional reflections as practitioners. A thematic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed several key findings. Participants consistently reported a surprising sense of being understood and validated by the AI, noting its ability to ask reflective questions and offer support. However, this was invariably tempered by the critical observation of a lack of authentic human presence. They highlighted the absence of non-verbal cues, tone of voice, and embodied connection as a decisive limitation, leading to interactions that often felt generic, repetitive, and ultimately superficial despite the AI's technically competent responses. Building on these empirical findings, we engage in a theoretical conceptualization, proposing a systems thinking view of AI in therapeutic practice to understand the multidimensional effects of the inevitable AI presence in the room. This systemic lens reframes AI not merely as a tool, but as a relational actor that can potentially stabilize or disrupt therapeutic and family systems, posing specific risks. The study concludes that a critical, systemic understanding is crucial for anticipating how AI is integrated into human relational networks, highlighting implications for therapeutic practice, ethics, and the future of family and therapeutic systems in a postdigital era.

Debates on artificial intelligence (AI) and its role in the Anthropocene unfold less as prospect-opening inquiries than as polarized stances, shaped by systemic fatigue and eschatological anxieties over limits already reached. At such a moment—when the foundations of thought seem unsettled—we are challenged to think at the limits of the thinkable, to risk the unthinkable, and to resist systematization as the domination of humans by reason. This paper responds to that challenge through a speculative, artistically informed inquiry.

Drawing on the author’s art installation Creatures Cluster as a symbolic schema of interconnected eco-logies, and on Platonic prompt-dialogues conducted across successive ChatGPT versions, the project explores anamnesis (knowledge as recollection) as a politics that seeks the improbable and incalculable within organological relations, enabling new connections that open spaces for speculation. Here, AI is positioned not merely as a tool but as an immanent, maieutic (generative) function, analogous to Socratic provocation: a self-reflective process staging thought through otherness.

Hovering between method and (un)concealment, logocentrism and paradox, logic and myth, the inquiry refuses absolute thinking, instead cultivating a dialogical praxis that enables polyphonic, multilayered engagements with diverse intelligences that evade closure—there is no absolute ground for any epistemology. In this mode, the paper proposes a shift from anthropocentric logic toward allocentric realization through techno-logical alienation. This shift neither seeks timeless truths nor treats AI as an inevitable agent tasked with delivering them. Instead, it articulates a language of co-existence that speaks from within crisis rather than transcending it. Anamnesis is thus explored as a transformative process nested within AI’s recursive feedback, where knowledge is co-constituted through relation in time and as time, as difference engaging difference, and where dialogue becomes an event rather than a debate.

This qualitative study explores the complex and multifaceted perceptions of mental health therapists regarding the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their professional practice. As AI tools become more prevalent in healthcare, understanding the perspective of practitioners is crucial for effective and ethical implementation. Using a Thematic Analysis approach, this research explores in depth the insights of eight Greek female therapists, aged 28 to 45, to uncover their views on AI's potential and limitations.

The analysis of semi-structured interviews revealed three primary category-themes: opportunities, concerns, and potentiality. Participants identified AI's potential to enhance their therapeutic practice by providing time and cost-effective assistance in areas like research, organization, and improving accessibility to mental health services. However, a significant sub-theme of resistance was also prominent, with the majority of therapists expressing reluctance to use AI to substitute core components of their therapeutic work. A major concern that arose, is the perceived inability of machine learning to replicate and apply essential therapeutic skills such as empathy, emotional awareness, and genuine understanding.

Despite these concerns, participants acknowledged AI's future potential, highlighting the need for structured training, strict and close monitoring, clear guidelines regarding GDPR and data privacy while having governmental bodies form a thorough legal framework. Along the same lines, a prominent motive for AI’s adoption has been the fear of missing out (FOMO).

Overall, this research reveals the perspectives of therapists, who recognize the technological opportunities while remaining cautious about AI's capacity to replicate the human elements of therapy and follow rules of data privacy. While the small sample size limits generalizability, the findings provide a foundational understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with AI adoption in mental healthcare, paving the way for future, larger-scale investigations into this critical topic.

The Trojan Horse Greek legend recounted by Roman poet, Virgil, in Aeneid, and Homer, in the Odessey, tells of the Greeks who, after 10 brutal years warring with the Trojans, turned to creative subterfuge to take their foe off guard. Near defeat, the Greeks constructed a wooden horse, hiding soldiers in its cavity. Mounting a brilliant ruse, the Greeks feigned defeat by presenting the horse to the city of Troy as a peace offering, then pretended to sail away. While some Trojans were skeptical of the offering, most were emboldened by their city’s triumphant win. Swayed by the horse’s stature and the populace’s pride, the equine was hauled into the city as a trophy. While citizens slept, Greek forces snuck from the horse, opening the city gates for the returning army to infiltrate and destroy the city, ending the war.

This Dream Team session reimagines the Trojan Horse figuration, recasting its metaphorical significance from deceit and concealed threat to consider capacities for inspiring speculation and activation of strategies, bypassing defenses and polarizing politics to invite non-confrontational and transformative change in troubled times. Delegates will convene to integrate theories and techniques of Expressive Arts (EXA) with qualitative inquiry, envisioning production of a generative Trojan Horse. Following, EXA is introduced to provide context for the session’s interactive components including inspiration for initiating an international EXA Inquiry Writing/Making Collective.

Introducing EXA as a Field of Practice

A small, international contingent of psychotherapists and faculty in the 1970s, initially trained in conventional western theories of psychology, became critical of the medical models of mental illness and treatment practices. Each had experience in the arts and struggled with keeping modes of creative engagement central to their work. Collectively, they became the shapers of the EXA field and for decades embraced their arts practices to deconstruct and reconstruct ideas about human health and wellness. EXA is an intermodal process of engaging individuals and groups, joining two or more sensory modalities--movement/dance, sound/music, visual arts/imagery, and poetry/writing--to facilitate expressive possibilities. EXA offers a non-judgmental space for externalizing experiences, offering alternative pathways when verbalization is less optimum or unavailable. Especially generative when engaging groups, EXA highlights lived experiences through activation and honoring of embodiment, resulting in fostering of community and social cohesion. EXA emphasizes the artmaking process over artistic production, employing a 'low-skill, high-sensitivity' framework, meaning participants engage in high-sensitivity processing of mind-body connection requiring low skill or no formal art training.

Where Expressive Arts and Arts-Based Research Touch

What is the physical, social, atmospheric and/or emotional terrain that compel our turn to the arts, making it difficult or impossible to explore a complex world otherwise? What principles and practices of EXA assist arts-based researchers in enacting methods that cultivate habits of ‘thinking about’ social and educational phenomena alongside habits of ‘doing with’ bodies, art, affect, and movement? As educational arts-based researchers (ABR) trained in EXA, we wander and wonder through our work with such questions. While EXA and ABR are distinct fields, they share important territory. Both EXA and postfoundational arts-based research practices (e.g. a/r/tography) draw on body-centered, modalities of dance, music, writing, drama, and visual art. The creative process rather than the end products attunes to and follows sensorial provocations. We experiment with where and how EXA and the proliferation of Arts-Based Research touches, departs from, and holds underexplored potentialities--all of which we are eager to explore with delegates.

Cultivating Creative Subterfuge

As EXA facilitators and researchers, we understand the importance of building a flexible container to support session emergences, while not premeditating or flattening paths. Following is what might thoughtfully instigate and flexibly hold our session:

20 minutes: Overview of EXA as Practice and Inquiry Mode

Presenters will provide a brief EXA overview and introduction to EXA as inquiry mode.

30 minutes: Engaging EXA as Inquiry Mode

Illustrating and practicing EXA as inquiry, presenters will facilitate multimodal activities, using the following guiding question: What can a collaboratively envisioned, creatively constructed, and strategically intelligent metaphorical academic equine do to subtly introduce compassionate subterfuge aimed at taking hyper-conservativism’s presently noxious contagion in academic realms off guard, for good?

40 minutes: Cultivating the Conditions for an EXA/INQ Writing Collaborative

We dream of a collective creatively disrupting the currently-amplified ethos of human (sic) supremacy, separatism, and rapid capitalism. Harnessing momentum from the session, we aim to cultivate conditions to transport compassionate subterfuge in higher education, sorting what it means to be companions of the strategically intelligent Trojan Horse.

Dominant traditions in physical education (PE) have framed movement primarily through natural science paradigms and physical skill models, positioning teachers as technicians who apply behavioral principles, established categorizations and performance pedagogies. This narrow view risks reinforcing ableist perspectives and elitist norms. What makes movement education distinctive in PE, is its potential to value both the concrete (skills, performance) and the abstract (principles, concepts) as intertwined and embodied phenomena that can promote inclusive, and holistic forms of learning. Thus, teaching about movement in PE entails moving beyond scientific reasoning alone, toward creating pedagogical conditions of non-representational thinking and action.
In the present study, these conditions are dealt with through the concept of intellectual acrobatics. Via a Deleuzian perspective, intellectual acrobatics refers to a process of destabilizing and reassembling established assumptions and categorizations, by inviting pedagogy to take bold conceptual and practical leaps. As such, the aim of this study is to examine whether and how intellectual acrobatics can position pedagogy-as-creation in PE, enabling teachers to think and work with movement in ways that generate new, yet-to-be-realized possibilities.
By using Deleuzian notions of thinking-with-signs, I initially explore dogmatic images of thought within PE and their implications for how movement is taught and learned. Afterwards, the concept of intellectual acrobatics is suggested as an alternative approach for reimagining movement education within PE. Running, as an example of locomotor movement, is used to illustrate how intellectual acrobatics can open multiple ways of encountering signs in, with, and about learning to run, each demanding equally diverse pedagogical responses. I finally consider the capacity of this concept to reorient contemporary PE, offering new perspectives for how movement might be understood and taught.

This study explores how metaphor writing supports future teachers in
shaping their professional identities and responding to the complex
challenges of our time. Metaphors are approached as “technologies of the
self” (Foucault, 1988), enabling student teachers to reflect on who they
are and who they aspire to become in a world marked by uncertainty,
interdependence, and crisis.
Through the creation of metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) about ‘the
environmental education teacher’, participants engage deeply with their
own experiences, articulating evolving understandings of teaching,
responsibility, and care. These figurative expressions serve as sites for
both personal reflection and collective meaning-making, revealing how
teachers’ ethical sensitivities emerge in relation to others and to the
more-than-human world.
Metaphor writing in this study was embedded within three university
courses, where relational interaction, dialogue, and self-reflection
formed the core of pedagogy. In these participatory spaces, students
explored how their experiences, perceptions, and aspirations could be
expressed and reimagined through metaphor, positioning learning as
relational, embodied, and transformative.
By foregrounding creativity, collaboration, and reflection, the study
contributes to the qualitative research community by demonstrating how
imagination and affect can engage future teachers with global and local
crises. It advocates for pedagogies grounded in imaginative,
self-reflective practices that foster resilience, ethical responsibility,
and transformative teaching. Metaphor writing emerges thus as a generative
approach for reimagining teacher pedagogy in response to the
interconnected challenges shaping education today.

Young children’s excited curiosity, wonder and adventurous pursuit of experience epitomise a world-in-formation. Their educational journey either expands or curtails their creativity, imagination and empathy. Neoliberalist values and institutional pressures in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in England often pressurise educators into outcome-focused teaching, forcing them to navigate complex political terrain (Moss, 2024). I focus on the hope offered by the alternative of a pedagogy of adventure, encouraging children to go knowingly into the unknown and to pursue their rhizomatic desire lines, as they seek to share everyday spaces with the human and more-than-human.

Through autoethnographic narrative from a nursery, I show that giving time and space to children’s ‘becoming-with’ allows a growing resonance with the world, challenging dominant egocentric values (Biesta, 2013). Two children noticing a spider’s web became a powerful story as data and of data, permitting a turning and re-turning (Barad, 2007). It led to thinking with data, allowing it to thicken, becoming more than itself (Ungar, 2017) within its wider narratives. Slow pedagogy (Clark, 2023) created entangled spaces and places. The children’s subsequent decision-making evidenced the affective condition of (be)longing, enmeshing their past, present and future hope (Kraftl, 2024).

The children’s thirst for (lost) knowledge and their subsequent attachments to the more-than-human, to place and to space evidence the joys which transcend standard boundaries. Methodologically, using this data from the ‘unruly edges’ (Tsing, 2015) unearths sensory, affective connection and new ecological possibilities. It places ECEC settings as potential democratic sites at the centre of interconnected communities.

In this paper, we explore collaborative scribbling, drawing, and writing as a research approach and how drawn and written marks became entwined with our thinking, creativity, and everyday lives over a period of three years. This paper presentation draws on a previous study in which literature’s thing-power created movements in student teachers’ learning diaries during a university course on children’s literature and drama in early childhood teacher education. To explore the affective and material power of literature, we employed a creative approach of visually playing with scribbles, sketches and collages when tuning into the movements we could sense in the learning diaries. The collaborative process became affective, embodied, material, and achronological, and extended across several events, modalities, and platforms. Here, we explore a new line of thought and inquiry about the continuous presence of movements, tensions, and meaning-making through written and drawn marks —lines that are not straight but quivering, remaining as visible moments of dialogue. For this paper, we each chose an event that felt significant from our previous study to continue to draw from, with, over and along those quivering lines. At the same time, we explore how they bend and move as part of our shared analytic processes. We are curious about the productive and nonsensical movements of quivering lines and messy marks as part of academic research and life; such marks are always collaborative, material and relationally performed. Thus, we ask: What playful, unruly, insipid and consequential meanings and relations can these marks perform?

This paper explores the ontological possibilities of in-service teachers’ engagement in deep listening (Gershon, 2020; Oliveros, 2005) with children. Deep listening is “a fully embodied attention to another’s expression so deep that you can hear the alignment between her intentions, attentions, and expressions” (Gershon, 2020, p. 1170). Deep listening is a means through which teachers can make space for a deeper, embodied understanding of children’s emerging knowledge and identities, “in an apprenticing rather than a hierarchical expert relationship” (Watkins & Lorenz, 2002, as cited in Laryea, 2018, p. 3). Using concepts centered in diffractive methodologies (Barad, 2007) I explore the nonhuman agency of deep listening within the embodied practice of in-service teachers in a graduate-level teacher learning program. Teachers in this language and literacy program engage in recursive inquiry cycles based in asset pedagogies (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014, 2017) using video analysis of their interactions with children that are based in rural and urban settings in Alaska.

Alaska Native scholars forward the importance of deep listening in pedagogical spaces (John Shields, 2018; Kawagley, 1995; Merculieff & Roderick, 2006). According to Kawagley, “To the Yupiat, listening not only with the ears, but with the mind and heart are essential to becoming aware of patterns and events that reflect natural laws” (1995, p. 2). Merculieff and Roderick admonish western educators to “stop talking” in their work in Alaska Native classrooms.

Working diffractively from data fragments that “glow” (MacClure, 2013, p. 661), I seek to understand what is created when teachers engage in deep listening in their learning-practice (Strom & Viesca, 2020) with children. What agentic role can deep listening (silence, awareness) play in the educative entanglements in which teachers are becoming alongside children within their learning-practice (Strom & Viesca, 2020)? What becomes in those spaces of deep listening?