Conference Agenda

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.