#mesearch

Abstract

The gendered character of wildfire research has marginalised alternative knowledges and realities, particularly those of women. This article examines how situated epistemologies can foster alternative ways of knowing and governing fire-risk in the context of feminist and decolonial critiques of the Anthropocene. As a young woman researcher early in her career studying social dynamics in communities affected by severe wildfires, fieldwork posed challenges due to my personal background and identity. However, it also offered opportunities to explore gender relations and practices in fire-prone areas of Portugal. What also meant knowing untold stories of women and the power structures that entangle them. Drawing on autoethnographic data gathered during research in two rural communities of Central Portugal, it is argued that researchers’ embodied situatedness and experiences influence how wildfire knowledge is produced and the consequences that may follow. The paper aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on how male- and white-dominant narratives in wildfire science have marginalised knowledges and approaches, preventing the much-desired paradigm shift in fire-risk reduction policies and practices. Finally, a wildfire-situated epistemology is proposed as a means of reclaiming not only unreported realities and the forces of reproduction underpinning the (m)Anthropocene’s master narrative but also shedding light on the current invisibility of its women researchers.

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Translation: Science - and men - need to listen to and incorporate feminist ways of understanding how fire works.

This is as retarded as the notorious Feminist Glaciology paper which basically argues the same thing about the scientific understanding of glaciers.

fieldwork posed challenges due to my personal background and identity.

Abstract

In higher education and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), interlocking oppressions can lead to inequitable environments for those who hold marginalized identities. Instructors can play key roles in either exacerbating or mitigating these inequities through their pedagogical approaches and choice of curricular material. However, it remains unclear how instructors who self-identify as committed to justice achieve higher levels of consciousness around areas of injustice and develop the self-efficacy to dismantle barriers for students over time. Here, we draw upon critical race theory and critical white studies to investigate what events or life experiences influence STEM instructors to understand the importance of social justice and examine how STEM instructors use this understanding to drive pedagogical shifts. We find variations in the ways that instructors’ experiences and identities shape their understanding of justice. In addition, we uncover factors that influence the switch moment; curriculum and pedagogical shifts; their relationship to justice work broadly; and barriers and supports for justice work. These stories hold powerful lessons for STEM education, but also for education more broadly, both in terms of pedagogical practice and the questions that shape research agendas on equity in education.

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Remember when Xians would scoff about science and "faith in science" – you know, on the internet, on a device powered by electricity that they can hold in their hand?

This is the same thing. The absolute retardation of someone ranting about STEM and "interlocking oppressions" – you know, on the internet, on a device powered by electricity that they can hold in their hand.

Okay, hot off the press in woke academia is a new master's thesis from the University of Northern Iowa in science education titled, "Autoethnography on Being a Queer Science Teacher in the Midwest." This one's crazy.

So autoethnography just means, "I wrote about myself and then called it data." And in this case, the data are just the author's own journal entries and school emails, which she used to study the quote, "complexities of navigating visibility, safety, and authenticity in the classroom while teaching science."

But by "while teaching science," she apparently just means while thinking almost exclusively about her queer identity, because the actual science teaching part is totally absent from this science education master's thesis.

I don't have time to break down this entire document, so I'll just highlight a few of the most insane parts.

Okay, so in one section, she writes about wanting to start a GSA club, a Gay Straight Alliance club at the middle school that she was teaching at. But the administrators were more than a little concerned that a club centered on sexuality and gender identity of fifth graders maybe wasn't entirely appropriate. When her principal asked why the GSA club was needed, she framed this reasonable question as institutional "gatekeeping" and a form of oppression against her queer identity.

Eventually, the principal compromised and limited the club to just seventh and eighth graders. She then describes an incident when a parent confronted her and accused her of convincing her daughter of being transgender at one of these GSA meetings, which she then dismissed as just a harmful stereotype against queer teachers influencing their kids. But later in the thesis, she says, quote, "starting a GSA is a visible act of activism," and that, quote, "in conservative Midwestern settings, just the presence of a GSA can shift public narratives about youth identity."

So the parents' concern was apparently totally justified because making kids question their gender identities and sexual identities is the entire point of a GSA in the first place.

This thesis also has a section titled "Pedagogical Approaches," which you might think is where the discussion about science education would be. But then she admits that there were no, quote, "sustained reflections centered specifically on lesson design, instructional frameworks, or science-specific pedagogy" in her journals and emails that she used as data.

But instead of viewing this as a total failure to take her job as a science teacher seriously, she claims that the very, quote, "absence of data on science teaching is itself meaningful" because it, quote, "suggests that my lived experience as a queer science teacher, identity negotiation, safety, and institutional navigation often overshadow writing and reflecting about my science lessons and teaching strategies."

Again, it all comes back to her queer identity and victimization. I think it's safe to say that what she calls "institutional barriers, administrative pushback, policy limitations, and parental concerns" looks a lot more like ordinary child safeguarding against adults like her who seem far too eager to make middle school a venue for sexual identity politics

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the experiences of a queer teacher in the Midwest. It examines how my identity, community, and professional practice intersect within the schools I taught that had traditional cultural norms. Through analysis of key moments in my personal journals and school emails, this study highlights the complexities of navigating visibility, safety, and authenticity in the classroom while teaching science.

The research examines experiences in teaching science and advocating for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) inclusion, including the formation of a student organization, the Gay–Straight Alliance (GSA). The data provides insight into how queer educators often serve as both teachers and informal advocates for marginalized students. At the same time, the study explores the emotional labor and career risks that accompany this role, specifically in Midwest communities where acceptance is evolving but not guaranteed in every space.

My autoethnography fills a gap in research on LGBTQ+ educators and highlights the importance of queer representation in schools, supportive school environments, and how queer educators transform and create spaces of belonging for students. Ultimately, this project seeks to show how queer teachers navigate their professional and personal identities in the Midwest while creating inclusive and affirming communities in their classrooms.

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Abstract

As a Malaysian Muslim transwoman and a social justice researcher, exploring her transgender identity in a conservative society positions Aisya within a long history of oppression and injustice alongside other global marginalised and vulnerable assigned-male-at-birth transgender groups. This paper offers reflections on Aisya’s lived experience of discrimination arising from her trans identity. It focuses on linking critical theory (decoloniality and intersectionality), methodology (autoethnography) and theological epistemology (a progressive Muslim standpoint), while the analysis ‘tells’ the autoethnographic ‘transgender identity’. By exploring her lived experience in a heterocisnormative neocolonial setting, this paper encourages a critical discourse of decolonising Aisya’s transgender identity by using intersectional feminist theory and critical authoethnography as methods of decolonial performance. This paper contests the colonial matrix of power by dismantling colonialism through rebuilding and rediscovering ancient and pre-colonial knowledge of Indigenous and colonised people to decentre heterocisnormativity, gender hierarchies and racial privilege. Ultimately, this paper invites readers to come along on a social justice journey through decolonial intersectional feminism, arise together in critical solidarity, and carry compassion, care, love, and the desire to heal from the grievances of colonialism.

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Intersectional gibberish.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.70134

Abstract

In this paper, I provide an autoethnographic account of my experiences of undergoing fertility treatment while working in a higher education institution in the United Kingdom. My autoethnographic reflections are situated in the context of neoliberal academia, characterized by high pressures to perform. Despite the prevalence of infertility and the significant impact that undergoing fertility treatment can have on an individual while trying to fulfill employment responsibilities, infertility has been described as an invisible workplace issue. Through autoethnographic vignettes, I seek to make visible the hitherto stigmatized infertile body in the neoliberal academy by bringing to the fore how I performed my role as an academic while undergoing fertility treatment; highlighting my emotional and embodied experiences of undergoing fertility treatment while working in higher education; and proposing recommendations as to what more can be done to support colleagues undergoing fertility treatment.

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Abstract

In this article, I conduct a phenomenological investigation influenced by elements of autoethnography to show my evolution as a researcher in the field of children’s spirituality. I use a series of short vignettes that serve as ‘critical incidents’ in the development of my thinking and I reflect on these phenomenologically using the lifeworld existentials of lived body, lived time, lived space, and lived relationships. My investigation reveals four key findings – (1) trust in my corporeal instincts – knowing what spirituality is, (2) my research is about the process, not the product, (3) the role of my trusted colleagues in my research endeavours, and (4) I re-interpret the past in the light of who I have now become as a leader in the field of children’s spirituality. It is hoped that this approach may provide an avenue for other researchers in children’s spirituality to consider.

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Purpose Through my autoethnographic account, I aim to explain how and why women's various social and cultural encounters shape singlehood. Through autoethnographic tales, I narrate the experiences of a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) student as they navigate polarizing professional and cultural expectations and confront academic loneliness.

Design/methodology/approach Autoethnography is a unique method of systematically analyzing one's perspective to understand a cultural experience. In an autoethnography, the researcher continuously switches between the researcher and the researched to provide reflexive insights into the cultural and social experiences of the field.

Findings Lack of social support, loneliness at work, the stigma associated with singlehood, and current social practices and policies have led me to define singlehood in my own terms. Women constantly face the social and cultural pressure of “having it all,” and alternative life choices such as singlehood can lead women to be stigmatized and isolated.

Originality/value Subjective accounts provide detailed longitudinal data of the singlehood journey. Layered accounts of my singlehood experience can create an image of how multiple intersectional identities, such as age, gender and cultural identities, shape the identity of single women in Academia. It is the multiple subliminal messages around single women that shape the experience as lonely and deeply difficult to navigate. To the best of my knowledge, this is one of the few papers dedicated to understanding women's views of singlehood identity in an academic context in the Indian subcontinent.

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Autoethnography is where the "researcher" and the subject are one and the same. You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not. That's literally what it is. She's doing nothing but writing about her feelings.

Abstract

This autoethnography, structured as a short story, traces my journey from childhood to my current role as a female researcher exploring the subversive possibilities of bisexuality in an urban Indian context as part of my doctoral research. My early beliefs were shaped by the social norms of my convent education, a Catholic upbringing and community, each reinforcing a rigid understanding of morality, relationships and sexuality. Through ethnography, I navigate between personal experiences and academic inquiry, encountering unresolved questions and contradictions that challenged these foundational beliefs. This short story highlights the complexities of living within structures that impose normative ideals, social expectations and moral standards, as well as the realities of everyday deviations. It further interrogates the essence of morality while positioning myself as a woman in society and reflecting on how my socialisation and lived experiences influenced my moral reasoning. By situating my personal journey within broader sociocultural contexts, this narrative ultimately questions the hegemonic patriarchal heteronormative and homonormative structures based on monogamy and monosexuality, offering a critical lens on how sexuality is constructed and negotiated in contemporary society.

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So, she's both a narcissist and a whore.