Conference Agenda

This autoethnographic study explores the construction of professional identity as a cultural and dialogical process within the experience of a Black university student navigating higher education. Grounded in Cultural Psychology andin Dialogical Self Theory the work examines how symbolic mediations, narrative meaning-making, and internal dialogues shape the ongoing formation of the self in academic contexts marked by racialization. Drawing on systematic self-reflection, memory work, field notes, and narrative reconstruction, the analysis follows autoethnographic principles that position lived experience as both data and interpretative lens.

The narrative traces critical moments of tension between multiple I-positions such as I as a student, I as a future professional, and I as a Black subject revealing how encounters with institutional expectations, racial dynamics, and professional aspirations triggered processes of rupture, reflection, and symbolic reorganization. These dialogical tensions functioned not as obstacles but as developmental catalysts, fostering new self-understandings and reconfigurations of professional belonging through new I positions emergences.

Through this cultural-psychological and dialogical self-theory perspective, professional identity emerges as a dynamic narrative continuously negotiated across educational spaces and in interactions between I-positions. The autoethnographic account highlights how becoming a professional intertwines with becoming racially conscious, demonstrating that identity development is deeply embedded in sociocultural experience and mediated by meaning-making practices. By situating personal experience within broader cultural processes, this study contributes to understanding how racialized trajectories in higher education shape the formation of professional selves and underscores the value of autoethnography as a rigorous methodological approach for investigating developmental phenomena.