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

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

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

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

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

Historically, self-reflective work has been disparaged as narcissistic or uncritical. In this blog post, I outline two ways, drawn from my own research and practice, in which starting from an...

Autoethnography and stakeholder engagement

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

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

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

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

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

Becoming a mature postgraduate researcher: Using autoethnography to stargaze

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

Mel Green

Mel Green is a lecturer in Education Studies and EdD doctoral researcher at the Open University (OU). Her current EdD research explores the intersections of OU associate lecturers’ personal and...

Claire Tupling

Dr Claire Tupling is a sociologist. Having worked as a senior lecturer in a number of universities she now works for the exam board AQA as a Research and Development Manager where she supports...

Abiola Odunro

Abiola Odunro is an educator from Manchester, his interest in education derives from his positive educational experiences and high hopes for all through the premise of education. His current focus...

Reframing health and wellbeing in schools: As pedagogy and as teacher identity

Curriculum: Theory, policy and practice

Since the publication of WHO guidance in 1998, policymakers around the world have sought to include health promotion within education, with schools in many countries now taking a Health Promoting...

Deborah Holt

Dr Deborah Holt is a lecturer in Mental Health Promotion and Health and Wellbeing at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include positive mental health promotion in education...