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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.,...

The BERA–Sage Handbook of Research-Informed Education Practice and Policy

Out May 2025 – pre-order now from Sage RRP £295.00 The BERA-Sage Handbook of Research-Informed Education Practice and Policy, 2 Vol. offers an in-depth exploration of the ways in which...

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a cornerstone of research assessment in the UK, influencing funding, reputation and strategy across institutions. However, many researchers are still...

Exploring ‘equivalences’ in the UK’s REF and India’s NRF: A comparative enquiry

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029

In recent years, both the UK and India have demonstrated a strong commitment to advancing research excellence through strategic frameworks – the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) and...

10 years of the BERA Blog

This series celebrates one decade of the BERA Blog, as an important and growing space to explore current and varied issues and questions of concern to the education community. To mark this...

At the intersection of philosophy and poetic inquiry

The relationship between poetry and philosophy is ineluctable (unavoidable and inescapable) and widely understood. Although in this blog post we won’t go as far as to claim, like Coleridge, that...

50@50 – A portrait of 50 years of educational research through 50 studies

As part of our 50th anniversary celebrations, BERA has collected together a set of 50 landmark studies that have had a significant impact on educational policy, educational practice, research...