Conference Agenda

Writing autoethnography through cultural ways of knowing embedded in the Caribbean Diaspora, concerns writing through global histories and relational practices of belonging. I conceptualize autoethnography within the context of writing by way of centering cultural ways of knowing embedded in the Caribbean Diaspora. In doing so, I seek to find different ways to reveal the challenges, limitations and possibilities of writing autoethnography as a research method, by way of interpreting how different communities of Diaspora come to know and understand their embodied experiences. With this in mind, I broach Diaspora as a site of interest to understand how Diasporised embodied knowledge, through different political locations, social and cultural conditions come to offer countervailing ways of knowing to undo colonial histories. One of my concerns with Diaspora is this relationship with the Diasporic subject and the nation-state, and how this relationship promotes and constructs contemporary ways of knowing civic forms of belonging. How, then, and what are the ways in which the public and social spaces of Diasporic peoples come to be constituted? The challenge here for autoethnography is with interpreting these incommensurable moments of belonging immanent to Diasporic experiences, and also to interpolate these incommensurable moments into some textualized medium from which the autoethnographer can draw. What I am concerned with is, how do these embodied historic colonial conditions of belonging continue to exist and inform the everyday lived experiences of the Diaspora? How does, the Diasporised-subject, be it through cultural ways of knowing and doing, come into political interpretive strategies to engage their ensuing public sphere? How does the Diasporised-subject know and understand when a particular place, social interactions, communicative exchanges come to be nuanced through colonial meanings, and simultaneously engendering a discursive performative citizenry, that culminates into ways of knowing the self and community?

One of us cared for her mother with cancer, and two of us have lived with cancer ourselves. From the beginning, many voices offered us imposed identities linked to cultural master narratives. Päivi was described as “a self-sacrificing caregiver of her dying mother.” A doctor told Eeva: “You are a cancer patient. Rest and follow the treatment plan.” A colleague told Satu at a Christmas lunch that, according to his physician wife, “the post-surgery period would be very difficult for her.”

Our collaborative autoethnography, what we call a trio-autoethnography, begins from these moments. We respond with counter-narratives grounded in embodied practices. Päivi reframed her role as a continuation of lifelong competence: after raising children and caring for her stepfather, she produced good life for her mother. Her calendar, where professional work and daily care coexisted, became a matter of balance rather than sacrifice. Eeva started dressage riding for the first time, working her body into strength and precision in the saddle, reclaiming agency the clinic had taken away. Satu laced her ski boots and set off on a fifteen-kilometre track right after an endoscopy, narrating herself not as weak but as enduring, rhythmic, and moving.

We analyse these counter-narratives through affective infrastructures and narrative agency. The waiting room, the stable, the ski track, and the chain of care shaped how we felt and we tell our stories. In dialogue we circulated experiences, re-storied them, and co-created ways of resisting imposed identities. Our contribution is to show that caregiving and illness identities are not determined by medicine or culture. We can remake them, so that agency and good life remain possible despite illness.

Over the last five or six years, the One Health and Conservation Medicine MSc programmes have encouraged students to consider which research approaches may best suit the research questions they feel, personally, drawn to explore for their dissertations. This has been achieved through a Research Approaches course that challenges students to find and refine their own question, emphasising approaches and paradigms across disciplines. Unusually for a College of Medicine, this course has integrated creative methodologies and autoethnographic inquiry among the options available to students.

During this time a growing number of students have chosen to undertake autoethnographic research projects. This recognises the growing awareness of how entangled we are with the planetary health, welfare, food, agricultural and ecological systems we seek to sustain and optimise. It further recognises the need for reflexive interdisciplinary collaborative practice to address these challenges.

In this presentation, we review the autoethnographic research undertaken to date. We start by discussing the rationale for introducing AE as a research option and the reasons students have chosen to adopt this as a mode of inquiry. We present the research questions explored, the knowledge contributions made and the paradigm shifts these have made possible.

Projects conducted by our diverse, international student body have ranged from the connections between ADHD and food system transformation, the role of interbeing in clinical practice, the challenges of protesting against the logging of old growth forests and those associated with working as an Official Veterinarian who is interested in posthumanist approaches to food system transformation. This modest sample highlights the importance of first and fourth person research and the reflexive turn as we attempt to meet the planetary challenges we face with greater self-awareness. We propose that AE supports an engagement with process and practice that supports relational connections and collaborative practices.

In an era defined by global crises and interconnected uncertainties, this co-authored project explores how autoethnography can serve as a relational and transformative mode of qualitative inquiry. We present a dual perspective—two faculty members who first encountered autoethnography within a doctoral mentorship and who now, as colleagues, continue to navigate the shifting terrain of higher education in the United States. Our shared inquiry examines how collaboration, vulnerability, and reflexivity shape research, teaching, and professional identity in challenging times.

Our engagement with autoethnography did not arise from institutional endorsement but from necessity, curiosity, and the conviction that lived experience holds scholarly value. Situated within the complex and often precarious conditions of U.S. higher education—marked by institutional pressures, questions of belonging, and calls for equity and transformation—this study becomes both timely and urgent. What began as a pedagogical relationship has evolved into a sustained dialogue across experience, discipline, and identity, reflecting the flows and connections that traverse contemporary academic life.

Through this collaboration, we identify six interrelated navigational practices—contextual awareness, theoretical grounding, clarity of purpose, relational responsibility, engagement with foundational literature, and preparation for reception—as ways of orienting within the uncertainties of autoethnographic work. These practices reveal the creative, ethical, and affective dimensions of scholarship that emerge when researchers work with, in, and for their communities.

By foregrounding the emotional, relational, and institutional labor of co-creation, this project contributes to ongoing dialogues about collaboration, mentorship, and transformation in qualitative research. We offer autoethnography as both method and way of being—nurturing spaces of care, resistance, and hope amid the evolving realities of higher education.