Sesje w języku polskim (Sessions in Polish)
Sesiones en español (Sessions in Spanish)
2026 Artist Spotlight
Sculpture: A Vessel for Expressive Autoethnography
Victoria Claire, University of Greater Manchester (England)
Moderators
Carolyn Ellis, University of South Florida (USA)
Arthur P. Bochner, University of South Florida (USA)
This presentation will show how a creative narrative practice using traditional reductive wood gives deeper insight into the making of the sculpture as well as the meaning it has for the artist’s life. The artist calls on creative practice storytelling that uses expressive evocative autoethnography to provide a methodological and pedagogical tool for reshaping the landscape of academia.
Author Spotlight
Positive Autoethnography: An Introduction to Theory and Practice
Claude-Hélène Mayer, University of Johannesburg (South Africa)
Moderator
Jerome Carson, University of Greater Manchester (England)
Positive Autoethnography (PosAE) combines personal narrative and positive psychology to offer a new approach to self-reflective research. This methodology focuses on personal growth, resilience, and well-being, addressing the growing need for a more constructive, positive approach in fields like psychology and sociology. By emphasizing positive reflexivity, PosAE creates space for insights that uplift both writers and readers.
Positive Autoethnography is a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and educators in PP, AE, psychology, social work, counseling, and beyond. Engaging in positive reflexivity, readers will find new ways to connect with autoethnographic practices that foster resilience, growth, and practical impact.
Author Spotlight
Falling into a Good Life: A Memoir
Laurel Richardson, Independent Scholar and Writer (USA)
Moderator
Patricia Leavy, Paper Stars Press (USA)
What if the life you thought was ending was actually clearing space for something better? Laurel Richardson tells the miraculous story of surviving a devastating fall down thirteen steps that left her unconscious with a broken neck, back, arm, ribs, eye socket, and a severe concussion. After extensive rehabilitation, Richardson moves into a senior independent living community. There, she discovers friendship, belonging, and the freedom to live authentically.
Falling Into a Good Life is both a memoir and a testament: that even in descent, there is art; even in loss, there is legacy; and even in falling, there is the chance to rise into something astonishing. The precision and emotional resonance of Richardson’s prose makes the memoir a rare fusion of lived experience and literary artistry. It is a powerful testament to survival, reinvention, and the courage to create joy in unexpected places. A good life isn’t stumbled into—it’s shaped, chosen, and, finally, gratefully lived.
Panel Discussion
Panelists
Christal Mischelle Omni, OMNI Institute of Well-being (USA)
Gemini Williamson, OMNI Institute of Well-being (USA)
Eryn Files, OMNI Institute of Well-being (USA)
Jennifer Joseph, OMNI Institute of Well-being (USA)
Da’kyla Everett, OMNI Institute of Well-being (USA)
Iyanah Chandler, OMNI Institute of Well-being (USA)
Dear Beloved SoulFlower is a creative and healing-centered research project that explores the power of love letter writing as a gentle, reflective method of storytelling. Born from a 2017 public wellness campaign in Topeka, Kansas titled Dear Black Women, the original project placed billboards across the city that offered affirmations of visibility, worth, and joy. Seven years later, that public expression of care has quietly transformed into a deeper narrative practice—one that now lives in the form of personal letters, social media offerings, and curriculum design.
At its heart, this project asks a simple question: What happens when we write with love? Through the Dear Beloved SoulFlower series, letters are written to students, elders, ancestors, memory, and land. Each letter begins with “Dear Beloved SoulFlower” and ends with “In Love and Light, (insert name)” These are not casual messages; they are invitations. Each one offers a moment of pause, an opportunity for reflection, and a space to be seen, heard, and held. Over time, this practice has become an integral part of a broader eco-spiritual curriculum rooted in reverence, embodiment, and joy.
This research embraces autoethnography as a way of honoring lived experience as data. Drawing from The Omni Process™—a framework that centers ancestral listening, cultural memory, environmental embodiment, and joy as a source of knowledge—this study uses love letter writing as both method and message. It resists the traditional boundaries of academic research and instead embraces the sacred, the relational, and the restorative. It asks not only what we know, but how we feel what we know—and how that feeling shapes what we choose to remember, teach, and pass on. Ultimately, Dear Beloved SoulFlower is a living methodology. It is a reminder that research can be rooted in care, that curriculum can be an act of love, and that writing can heal.
Author Spotlight
Writing and Other Familiar Things: Autoethnographic Possibilities
Ronald J. Pelias, Southern Illinois University (USA)
Panelists:
Chair: Roopam Mishra, University of South Florida (USA)
Sirrina Martinez, University of South Florida (USA)
Nadia Marie Johnson, University of South Florida (USA)
Kasima Ali, University of South Florida (USA)
Kento Kaiwada, University of South Florida (USA)
Edwin Ramirez, University of South Florida (USA)
Writing and Other Familiar Things: Autoethnographic Possibilities puts on display a number of distinct ways of structuring essays that can be used in qualitative research and creative writing.
The book takes as its subject an assortment of things. Part 1 approaches writing from a variety of perspectives, addressing distinct aspects of writing such as the power of the written word, the prevalence of writing in our daily lives, and the writing process itself. Part 2 takes on a variety of subjects, including seashells, hands, conundrums, masks, teaching, COVID, partners, hats, gardening, parents, politics, and hope. By presenting various structural possibilities, the book might be described as a “how-to” book for any writer interested in a variety of creative approaches to writing essays
Author Spotlight
A Feminist Autoethnography of Language Education and Childhood on Slavic Soil and Stateside
Margaret Berg, University of Northern Colorado (USA)
Interviewed by
Chris Toliver, Independent Scholar (USA)
A Feminist Autoethnography of Language Education and Childhood on Slavic Soil and Stateside replicates and offers a fresh reconceptualization of the 1970 comparative education book Two Worlds of Childhood, U.S. and U.S.S.R., researched and written by Urie Bronfenbrenner, who later drew on the experiences to propose a comprehensive framework of human development: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System Theory (BEST), published in 1979.
BEST situates the human at the center of four systems of a social environment where the highest level of culture (or macro-system) affects all lower levels down to the individual person, but where the lower levels can also influence higher levels. This interplay between culture and a person lies at the heart of autoethnography, and in this book, the author, an English teacher of 30 years, applies this framework to her experience preparing future teachers of the English language in a Northwestern Russian university.
This book will appeal to scholars and researchers with interests in comparative and international education, literacy education, and autoethnography.
Author Spotlight
Promoting Resilience and Inspiration: An Autoethnographic Study of Dominican-American Students
Nelson Reynoso, Bronx Community College (USA)
Interviewed by
Silvia M. Bénard Calva, Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes (México)
This book details a study conducted at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. The text combines insights from semi-structured interviews with Dominican-American students enrolled at the college, with autoethnographic reflection by the author, also a Dominican-American scholar. By investigating the stories of six individuals, who arrived in the US without any English proficiency, the book captures many of the financial, social, linguistic, environmental and cultural challenges faced by immigrants in the US. Focusing on how these three individuals developed resilience to these pressures however, the volume moves beyond a deficit understanding of the immigrant experience to highlight how individuals have drawn on personal, cultural, and social strengths to build resilience and achieve academic success.
The stories provide a model of resilience for helping other community college students and in particular, students with an immigrant background to achieve academic success despite overwhelming odds.
Honorary Scholar Spotlight
Patricia Geist-Martin
San Diego State University (USA)
Interviewed by
Sarah Parsloe, Rollins College (USA)
2026 IAANI Awards
Moderator: Tony Adams, Bradley University (USA)
Outstanding Book
Unraveling: An Autoethnography of Suicide and Renewal, M. F. Alvarez
Outstanding Edited Book
Crafting Autoethnography: Processes and Practices of Making Self and Culture, Jackie Goode, Karen Lumsden, and Jan Bradford
A Culturally Centered and Intersectional Approach to Reproductive Justice, Tomeka M. Robinson, Sabrina Singh, and Christina Mary Joseph [Honorable Mention]
Outstanding Thesis
Stories in the Border Country: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Narrative Identity and Re-storying, Natasha Gallagher Marron
Outstanding Dissertation
Living (Trauma) Containers for Healing Justice, Transformation, and Collective Liberation: An Autoethnographic Expressive Arts-Based Investigation with White Settler Family Members, Amanda K. Gross
Outstanding Audio-Visual Award
Pictures at a Gender[*] Exhibition: Musical Theater Vignettes about Gender [Non-Conformity], Christopher Cayari
Filming Madness: Institutions, Individuals, and Ethical Considerations, Hande Çayır (Honorable Mention)
2026 H. L. Goodall and Nick Trujillo “It’s a Way of Life” Award in Narrative Ethnography
WAVE 1.12.22, Desirée Rowe
Ellis-Bochner Autoethnography and Personal Narrative Research Award
Economies of Misery: Success and Surplus in the Research University, Bryan McCann
2025 Journal of Autoethnography Article of the Year Award
The Eulogy as Spiritual Autoethnography, Carolyn Ellis
Nothing Happened: An Autoethnography of Nonevents and Screaming Resistance, Elizabeth M. Lozano