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In this chapter, we think about shifting stories of research as our experience of relational methodology through narrative leads us to think differently about our work together – our research relationship and responsibility to one another as colleagues, as well as our participants. We inquire into the ways our relational methods of narrative inquiry have continued to compose shared, sustaining stories of research and research community, support our own curriculum making and identity-making experiences, and provoke our respective thinking in new ways. We revisit Aoki’s metaphor of planned and lived experiences to think about the ways that research is lived out in our lives and the complexities of sense-making about research and ourselves as researchers. Research-as-experience can be viewed as a lived curriculum of research, which interrupts the dominant narrative of research-as-plan and acts as a counterstory of research. Research-as-experience is not a static research plan that must be implemented but rather a course of lives within the context of research to be experienced. This perspective recognized that research shifts, just as the lives and identities of our participants shift. Our plans for our participants within our research cannot contain their shifting identities and must shift with them in order to honour their experience. Our work together helped us to understand that it is only through relationship with our research participants and each other that we could approach a deep understanding of their experiences and the narratives they shared about those experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges that have faced and do now face marketing scholars through the lens of one scholar who entered the field in early 1970s and who continues to observe the developments in the world and in the disciplines of marketing and consumer research.

Historical journey through the trials and tribulations of one scholar as well as the developments in marketing and consumer research as experienced from this scholar’s point of view. A story of how this one scholar’s ideas and impressions grew out of his experiences.

Challenges against introduction of new perspectives and ideas have existed in the disciplines of marketing and consumer research, and they continue to exist.

This is only a personal history of experiences one scholar has had in the field.

For marketing and consumer research disciplines to positively contribute to humanity’s growth and search for meaning, how scholars in the field think of their disciplines, their relationship to ideologies and the purposes for their existence as scholars may need a radical change.

Considering the challenges faced and possibility of alternative modes of scholarship and knowledge generation, as well as the recognition of the key positional advantage of marketing and consumer research scholars in contemporary culture for understanding the human condition, will help humanity’s quest for a world with greater peacefulness and harmony.

The paper presents a perspective of disciplinary history not often heard in the mainstream media of the two disciplines.

In this chapter, we inquire into our ever-unfolding experiences as teachers and with teacher research participants in order to explore the complexities of curriculum making in teacher education. In doing so, we lay the foundation for understanding narrative inquiry as both theory and method as such, frame our work in this volume. Curriculum making, a term introduced by Joseph Schwab, reflects the dynamic process of learning in which the teacher, learner, subject matter, and milieu interact. Moreover, we think about the ways people make sense of themselves, identity-making, in the process of curriculum making. Through Derek’s experiences with Lee, a previous Grade five student, and Cindy’s work with Jesse, a research participant, we inquire into their curriculum making and identity-making. We argue that in schools, there are multiple curricula in the making, going beyond the formal notions of curriculum as grade-level standards or classroom objectives. In our inquiry process, we consider experiences in schools through Aoki’s understanding of curriculum-as-plan and lived curriculum. In his writing, Aoki noted that the lived experience of curriculum in schools is much more complex and varied than the planned curriculum that is meant for a generalized audience; students and teachers bring their lives with them into particular contexts that indelibly shape the ways that curriculum is lived out. As well, we think about the ways experiences and places shape teachers and researchers and the ways we see the world.

In this chapter, we argue that through relational research experiences with colleagues and participants, researchers are in a shared process of curriculum making and identity-making. Through reflections on a key shared experience, we demonstrate that in the liminal space of our work together, we have begun to shape our community identity-making to tell a story of ourselves as researchers within that community. In our work together, we have come to understand the ways that research contexts shape the ways we engage in research and the identities we compose as researchers. We suggest that as researchers, we meet in borderlands to engage in relational inquiry with participants and our colleagues. Similarly to Anzaldua, we understand the borderlands as liminal spaces between our respective worlds of research where we come together to compose new stories about ourselves as researchers and the research in which we engage. We attend to the places of tension as they emerge as opportunities to understand more deeply ourselves as researchers and as co-participants in a relational research experience. In doing so, we attend also to our shared responsibilities to each other in an ongoing research relationship. In the borderlands, we meet to tell a new story about who we are and who we are becoming in all our complexity. In this examination of the research community, we have grown into together, we define parameters and processes that resonate with our individual identities as researchers as well as our communal identities within a supportive research community.

This paper advances what is known about emotional experiences and challenges when researching work-caused trauma in organisations and illustrates learning for researchers of work-related trauma. Viewing vulnerability as strength could be conceived as an oxymoron. The paper explains how vulnerability can lead to strength for researchers/participants and focuses on researcher reflexivity in relation to one interview with a woman leader in a small-scale qualitative study.

The research protocols of the qualitative study are outlined: pre-interview briefings, participant journaling and semi-structured interviews. Researcher reflexivity, following Hibbert's (2021) four levels of reflexive practice (embodied, emotional, rational and relational), is applied to an interview with a woman leader.

The paper illustrates how research design and recognising vulnerability as strength facilitates considerable relational work and emotional experiences. Researcher reflexivity conveys impact of work-caused trauma on participants and researchers. The paper advances understandings of vulnerability as strength in practice, emotional experiences and challenges of work-caused trauma research.

In this paper, a single case of researcher reflexivity is considered.

There are practical implications for researcher relationships with participants; demonstrating emotional awareness; responding to traumatic stories, participant distress and impact on the researcher; issues of vicarious/secondary traumatic stress; having safe psychological systems; scaffolding a process which recognises vulnerability as strength and becoming personally and methodologically vulnerable; risk of embodied and emotional impact; commitment to reflexivity and levels of reflexive practice.

There is lack of researcher reflexive accounts of practice when studying trauma. Few scholars suggest ways to support researchers in challenging and difficult research. There is silence in research exploring leaders' experiences of work-caused trauma. This paper provides a reflexive account in practice from a unique study of women leaders' experiences of work-caused trauma.

This chapter examines the teaching practice of the author in the Faculty of Education, University of Malta, taking sessions in smart learning as part of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) study units in Bachelors of Education and Masters in Teaching and Learning degree programs between 2017 and 2019. My teaching sessions ran concurrent with undertaking separate doctoral research investigating how participants experience “smart learning journeys.” Smart learning journeys in the research were conceptualized as real-world journeys, with geo-spatially relevant points of interest forming a journey of locations related to a topic of learning, providing context-aware content via digital interactions. Research was not connected to teaching practice, though students who took TEL units also participated in the same smart learning journey activity as part of their syllabus.

Though teaching sessions were not part of my research, my classroom practice modified as a result of emerging research findings, and my teaching benefited as I gained deeper understanding about smart learning activities and the role of the learner in them. Using dialogic learning methods and techniques inspired from my research interview methodology, class sessions became noticeably more effective as students engaged directly in discovering their own learning from having participated in the smart learning journey.

The purpose of this paper is to gather research-stories, that is, the stories of the researcher themselves. The authors gather stories that situate researchers in their social, political, personal and professional contexts to learn about being a researcher in a University at this particular historical moment.

The authors’ stories began with the naive question – “What is it like to be a researcher in a University right now?”. The authors asked this question of Julie White’s (2012) “disposable academics” (p. 50); short-term and casualised staff with insecure teaching or research contracts. They asked White’s (2012, p. 48) “academic infantry” the mid-career researchers who have felt the labour intensification of recent times. They also asked senior academics, established professors with established research histories and the security (they hope) of a steady track record and a list of external grants.

The answers were not simple. They were stories of the pragmatics of managing the new academic scene; maintaining a research passion despite the pressures of new managerialism’s focus on certain forms of efficiency, external accountability and monitoring; resolving the apparent losses of autonomy, academic freedom, support, security and academic dignity. The authors heard emotional and vulnerable stories, stories of personal investment and emotionally and physically risky and dangerous encounters. The authors learnt something of the complex business of negotiating personal and professional subjectivities.

The authors heard emotional and vulnerable stories, stories of personal investment and emotionally and physically risky and dangerous encounters. They learnt something of the complex business of negotiating personal and professional subjectivities.

We introduce this volume featuring the work of C. L. Clarke and D. A. Hutchinson with references to existing literature addressing complexities of teacher knowledge development. Drawing from their metaphor of the muskeg, we write about ways in which notions of teacher knowledge intersect with prior personal and professional experiences across time, place, and social interaction. Clarke and Hutchinson write about ways in which identities that they view as having developed at the edges of their communities have contributed to shaping their sense of professional and personal identity in profound ways. They examine the potential impact of these experiences in: shaping their research and the building of research relationships with their participants using a narrative inquiry approach; and developing ways in which the use of poetic expression and word images enriched their understanding of the development of teacher identity and knowledge and informed their curriculum making. A chapter written by their dissertation supervisor offers further insight into ways in which their use of a narrative inquiry approach shaped their research work and writing, and offered a unique glimpse into their research phenomenon. We position this work in relation to existing research in the area of teacher knowledge and highlight ways in which this work contributes to knowledge in the area, as well as contributing to ideas about how narrative inquiry methodology has informed the examination of their research phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to reach beyond existing research into the mental health benefits of arts-based or educational opportunities, to discover the particular impact on members’ recovery processes of being part of a committed, long-term troupe or community – specifically focussing on specialist theatre companies.

Following a literature review investigating the growing number of theatre troupes for mental health service users, qualitative research was conducted into one such company. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with six company members. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts was then cross-checked and enriched through a group interview with six other members.

Two overarching themes emerged: the importance of “being known” within the company (key sub-themes included “intuitive democracy” and the “paradox of reliability”), and the ways in which individuals “branched out” from this secure basis into artistic, professional and voluntary roles, while remaining company members.

The findings from this small-scale study, while not necessarily generalisable to other long-term communities of care and learning with a “troupe” or “team” structure, would provide valuable starting points for a larger-scale investigation.

If generalisable, institutions in the mental health and educational worlds should place more emphasis on developing and resourcing long-term models of support.

The specialist theatre company model contrasts with prevalent individualised, time-limited services for those experiencing mental ill health.

The study provides compelling narrative evidence to amplify understanding of how “connectedness” is experienced within a troupe, and may enable individuals with mental illnesses to progress further in their recovery journey.