This Saturday I was privileged to attend the CHRE postgraduate colloquium, where several students presented their work. One of the pleasures of being back in Perth is being able to connect with a research community again, drawing on the work other people are doing to extend and deepen my own. Baden Offord’s opening comments about the value of critical friendships and serendipitous discoveries really highlighted some of the ways in which events like these can be helpful, not just for postgraduate students but for all of us.
I took a bunch of notes, but rather than posting them I want to write more generally and leave space for presenters to develop and share their projects online themselves, especially given how personal much of the research is. One of the things that really struck me about the day was the ways in which presenters drew together their own experiences with robust theoretical analysis. Auto-ethnography and other tools for rigorous critical reflection are central to this; we weren’t taught to situate ourselves within our work in my degree, and it’s been very interesting seeing how others go about this.
leftover words 