Events
Forthcoming events:
Close to My Heart: Autoethnographic Approaches
** Apply to be a paid PGR workshop facilitator via the Call for Participation. All Sussex postgraduate researchers are welcome to apply. The deadline for proposals is Thursday 17 April 2025 **
Close to My Heart: Autoethnographic Approaches is a one-day, creative research methods gathering that invites PGRs from across Sussex to explore diverse methodologies related to autoethnographic research. Through innovative and collaborative workshops, we will reflect on and attend to the challenges and joys of working with subject matters close to our hearts.
A method of self-study that combines characteristics of autobiography and ethnography, autoethnographic research connects the autobiographical and personal to broader social meaning, analysing researcher lived experience to better understand cultural phenomena.
Building on the conversations and connections forged as part of the RLI-funded Close to My Heart: PGR Perspectives (May 2024), a symposium exploring ethical considerations for postgraduate research relating to ‘closeness’ and researcher positionality, Close to My Heart: Autoethnographic Approaches proposes a more finely tuned focus on locating points of interdisciplinary intersection through exploring innovative autoethnographic methodologies. This event seeks to unravel the possibilities for connection that can emerge from situating our individual, personal experiences in the context of others, our commonalities and our differences, to consider new ways of working across our different fields of postgraduate study. After all, ‘the personal is political’.
We will close the day with a shared reflective session that undertakes reflexivity and collective autoethnography, focusing on transdisciplinary processes of collective critical reflection, documentation and meaning-making as we consider ways to apply new working methods to our own research practice and beyond.
Registration will open in April and the programme will be finalised by the end of the month. Tea and coffee will be available from 09.30 in the Jane Attenborough Studio, where lunch will also be provided. During sessions, the Jane Attenborough Studio will be available as a dedicated breakout space.
If you'd like to get involved and find out more, please see our CFP or email event organiser Tiffany Murphy (PGR in Drama, Theatre and Performance) at tm505@sussex.ac.uk.
This event is supported by the Sussex Researcher School's Researcher-led Initiative Fund and the Media, Arts and Humanities Research Culture Fund.