The 2025 International Symposium on Autoethnography and Narrative (ISAN) featured more than 100 prerecorded presentations of autoethnographic and narrative research. Several presentations are linked throughout the program (below). The Symposium also featured several spotlight sessions. More than 300 people registered for the symposium and participants with more than 25 countries.
Panel Discussion
Odkrywanie autoetnografii: dyskusja panelowa [Discovering Autoethnography]
Moderatorzy / Moderators:
Anna Kacperczyk, Uniwersytet Łódzki
Krzysztof Konecki, Uniwersytet Łódzki
Dariusz Kubinowski, Komitet Nauk Pedagogicznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Marcin Kafar, Uniwersytet Łódzki
Autoetnografia dialogiczna wobec momentów zwrotnych w praktykach doświadczeniowo-poznawczych [Dialogical Autoethnography Towards Turning Points in Experiential-Cognitive Practices]
Autoetnograficzne odkrywanie światów pośrednich: choroba – niepełnosprawność – ja jako Inny [Autoethnographic Discovery of Intermediate Worlds: Illness – Disability – Self as Other]
Słowne i muzyczne medytacje autoetnograficzne nad kondycją Akademii [Verbal and Musical Autoethnographic Meditations on the Condition of the Academy]
Meet-the-Author
No One Can Arrest Our Dreams: Black Men Storying a Path Toward Educational Justice and Freedom
Clarice O. Thomas, Saint Louis University (USA)
Moderator
Adeyemi Doss, Saint Louis University (USA)
This book critically analyzes the school policies and individual practices that inflict educational harm upon the lives of students who experience criminalization, disengagement, lack connectedness, and a sense of belonging at school. The narratives center the voices of three men who describe how home environments and educational policies and practices structure schools into locations where Black and other minoritized students are forced to survive. Their stories help examine how criminalized experiences—school removal and incarceration—intersect with historical and social factors that create anti-Black practices in schools and communities. The narratives are critical pedagogical tools for those who work with Black, Latinx, low-income, and other minoritized youth. Readers will have a more in-depth understanding about how Black males experience schools, neighborhoods, and the world.
This volume will appeal to teachers and teacher educators in K-12 schools, colleges, and universities.
Songwriting, Narrative and Performance: Conversation and Collaboration
David Carless, University of the West of Scotland (Scotland)
Kitrina Douglas, University of West London (England)
Moderator
Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida (USA)
Meet-the-Authors
Assessing Autoethnography: Notes on Analysis, Evaluation, and Craft
Andrew F. Herrmann, East Tennessee State University (USA)
Tony E. Adams, Bradley University (USA)
Moderator
Keith Berry, University of South Florida (USA)
Autoethnography provides readers with multiple ways to analyze autoethnographies and other forms of personal narrative writing. Given the proliferation of such forms across academic contexts, the book offers a guide of what autoethnography is, why it matters, and how to do it. Taking each of the three parts of auto-, ethno-, and -graphy in detail, Herrmann, and Adams, provide criteria and points of discussion to ensure robust assessment of an autoethnographic work as a whole. Every chapter is accompanied with exemplars and considers issues such as ethics, storytelling, and good writing. The book discerns the kinds of personal experiences that often work best for autoethnographic projects and provide ways to evaluate fieldwork, interviews, and representations.
Assessing Autoethnography offers guidance to scholars and dissertation advisors, across diverse disciplines, in producing autoethnographic work and utilizing autoethnographic methods.
Meet-the-Author
The Poetry of Belonging: Healing with the Language of the Wound
Iris Gildea, University of Toronto (Canada)
Moderator
Amy Panton, University of Toronto (Canada)
In The Poetry of Belonging: Healing With the Language of the Wound, Iris J. Gildea invites readers to envision radical ways forward regarding trauma theory and embodied healing. Using an autoethnographic approach, frameworks of feminist phenomenology, earth-based spirituality, and poetic inquiry, Iris’ memories mix with imagination as ancient healing wisdom unleashes itself in her dreams and waking life. In Part One, Iris critiques contemporary trauma theory from the inside out. She shows why traditional trauma theory’s reliance on a praxis of deficiency that considers survivors of complex childhood trauma as “broken” is faulty. In Part Two, she pivots to provide a radically more integrative approach to healing. Using her own poetic inquiry practice which she calls “a beautiful process of discovery through the languaging of my wound and body,” Iris invites readers on a journey of writing with the wound. She shows first hand how self-love and thriving emerge when poetry and earth-based spirituality become a foundation of embodied belonging. Prompts, guidelines, and rituals are also offered for those who want to develop a practice of poetic inquiry to support their healing journey.
Meet-the-Author
The Lamentations: A Requiem for Queer Suicide
Patrick Anderson, University of California, San Diego (USA)
Moderator
Patricia Ybarra, Brown University (USA)
The Lamentations explores the struggles and resilience within the queer community, offering a unique blend of historical analysis and emotional tribute to those affected. Author Patrick Anderson brings to light the personal stories of individuals in the queer community who have ended their lives, compiling narratives from sources like newspaper articles, obituaries, and case studies. The book confronts the harsh realities of loneliness, shame, and oppression faced by many LGBTQ+ individuals, providing a poignant reflection on the societal challenges they face.
The Lamentations is more than a meditation on death; it’s a narrative of survival, mourning, and healing. Sharing personal accounts, including the losses of loved ones and friends, Anderson highlights the importance of memory and storytelling in celebrating the vibrancy of queer life amidst the sorrow of loss.
Meet-the-Authors
Ngā Kūaha: Voices and Visions in Māori Healing and Psychiatry
Wiremu NiaNia, Tohunga, Turuki Health Care (New Zealand)
Allister Bush, Māori Mental Health Service, Pasifika Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (New Zealand)
David Epston, Co-originator of Narrative Therapy (New Zealand)
Moderator
Arthur P. Bochner, University of South Florida (USA)
Ngā Kūaha: Voices and Visions in Māori Healing and Psychiatry explores what it means to hear voices and see visions from the perspectives of Māori healer Wiremu NiaNia and psychiatrist Allister Bush. Wiremu explains Ngā Kūaha as referring to doorways and offers entranceways into Māori knowledge about wairua (spirituality) handed down by his forebears and other Māori sources. Drawing on their 18-year partnership, Wiremu and Allister highlight the harmful colonial impact of psychiatry in suppressing Māori views of voices and visions. They describe ways of working together in clinical practice to address this history of injustice and how to identify whether distressing perceptual experiences may represent Māori cultural experiences, psychiatric or psychological symptoms or all of these.
This book advocates for practices that enable genuine partnerships between Māori healers, other wairua practitioners and mental health clinicians to improve the mental health and spiritual care of Māori and perhaps other peoples.
Honorary Scholar Spotlight
Aftercare: Retiring from the University
Kim Etherington, University of Bristol (England)
Interviewed by
Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida (USA)
Sitting with Trees: A Nature-inspired, Collective-Self Ethnographic Research Study about Optimal Aging and Black Womanhood
Panelists
Chris Omni, The OMNI (Outreach * Mentorship * Narrative Inquiry) Institute and Florida State University (USA)
Gemini Williamson, The OMNI Institute and Florida State University (USA)
Eryn Files, The OMNI Institute and Florida State University (USA)
Gloria Ragsdale-Lambert
Janet Haynes
Greetings, My Beloved SoulFlowers!
My name is Dr. Chris Omni. While working on my dissertation, I underwent a period of deep spiritual and intellectual awakening. I arrived at the understanding that my research should do more than merely contribute to a body of knowledge to be accessed by a privileged few; my work needed to complement my Divine assignment of creating and holding spaces for healing and self-restoration. My studies needed to speak directly to the spirits of every Black woman who, like me, have felt isolated, invisible, or silenced. Perhaps, they even felt like their emotional, mental, social, and spiritual well-being came second, third, or not at all to the demands of society. Ultimately, my awakening has led to this moment; a moment that I joyfully share with each of you.
Sitting with Trees is an IRB approved, culturally tailored ethnographic investigation that explores two primary research questions: 1) What can we learn from older Black women who spend time in/with nature? 2) How can nature be experienced as a site of teaching, learning, and well-being among older Black women? These central questions are explored using a five-step methodology called “The Omni Process:”
Step 1: Answering this two-part question, “How did I get here?”
Step 2: Eco-mindfulness: Tapping into our senses while in communing with Mother Earth
Step 3: Picture taking: Capturing images of things that amplify your joy
Step 4: Journal writing: Taking time to write a love letter to self
Step 5: Answering this two-part question, “Where do I go from here?”
Please join me, the Sitting with Trees pilot participants, and two research mentees as we discuss the lessons learned from this nature-inspired study. One last thing: Although these lessons were gained from Black women in their 60’s, the information can be generalized to larger audiences. Therefore, everyone is welcome to join this space of healing and self-restoration.
Until next time…
Inhale Light. Exhale Light. Be light!
~Dr. Chris Omni, MPH, MLS
The War on Woke: Autoethnographic Narratives of Struggle, Defiance, and Hope
Panelists
Lori West Peterson, St. Edwards University (USA)
Lisa Tillmann, Rollins College (USA)
Rachel Silverman, Boise State University (USA)
Stephanie Martinez, St. Edwards University (USA)
Beginning in 2023, the political right has waged an all-out attack on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) on public college and university campuses. Anti-DEI bills have been signed into law in 13 states (Taylor, 2024) with Texas and Florida being, in the words of civil rights lawyer Antonio L. Ingram II, “the vanguard” (quoted in Gretzinger & Hicks, 2024). Legislation has been introduced in several other states. Describing the outcome on affected campuses as “sweeping, confusing, and inconsistent” (Gretzinger & Hicks, 2024), a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education details the chilling impact of anti-DEI laws on faculty, staff, and students. Among the most reported effects were feelings of loss: loss of belonging, of safety, of community. Although red states have been the epicenter of the anti-DEI “war on woke,” reverberations can be felt throughout academia as this unprecedented assault on U.S. higher education exposes the fragility of academic freedom and freedom of speech.
Our edited collection (currently in progress) brings together diverse and evocative autoethnographic narratives that explore the lived experience of backlash, reflect on what can be learned from that experience, and envision ways to apply learnings to future academic and civic endeavors.
Authors on this live panel will discuss topics such as bans on books and/or so-called “divisive concepts” (e.g., critical race theory, implicit bias, intersectionality, systemic oppression); the altering, defunding, and/or eliminating of DEI centers, offices, staff, programs, policies, trainings, affinity groups, and recruitment and retention practices; state-sponsored, institutional, and/or self-censorship; threats to bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom; abstinence-only and heteronormative sex education; anti-LGBTQ+ policies, including bathroom restrictions; nativist anti-immigrant backlash; anti-union and/or anti-tenure policies and practices; brain/talent drain; destabilized, chilly, and hostile campus climates; and walking tightropes of doxing and cancel culture, suspended above a cauldron of toxic political divides.
Ecocultural Identity and Autoethnography
Panelists
Margaret Berg, University of Northern Colorado (USA)
Elizabeth M. Lozano, Loyola University Chicago (USA)
Ana María Lozano, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Colombia)
Maureen Igoe, Denver Botanic Garden (USA)
The purpose of this panel is to discuss the role(s) that the “ecocultural identities” of the panelists play in our autoethnographic lives, and the ways in which we imagine it shaping our future practices on and off the page. The topics range from the written representation of the natural-cultural world through the communicative power and meaning of the gaze and of distress sounds across animal species, to the practice of natureculture at a botanic garden in Colorado’s largest city.
The question we pursue in this discussion is “how are our ecocultural identities emerging in our autoethnographic lives?” The presenters provide brief introductions to their emergent ecocultural identities in English and/or Spanish and welcome a general discussion with the audience regarding their own ecocultural identities.
2025 IAANI Awards
Moderator: Tony Adams, Bradley University (USA)
Each year, the International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry (IAANI) solicits nominations for various awards. For 2025, we solicited nominations for four awards: Outstanding Article, Outstanding Book Chapter, Early Career Award, and the Bochner and Ellis Resonance Award. We also awarded a Journal of Autoethnography Article of the Year.