What Happened Here? Making a Place for Playfulness and Vulnerability in Research

• In Event: Roundtable Session 42
  In Roundtable Session: Counterstories and Playfulness: Reimagining Experience

Abstract

We inquire into stories of experience around research. Through this inquiry, we hope to better understand the complexities of research places and compose forward-looking stories of research, which are more inclusive of relational narrative methodologies which value playfulness and vulnerability. Socially this work is significant in that we inquire into the stories around place. Using Maria Lugones’ (1987) work on playfulness and world traveling, we think about the ways that research is an act of playfulness. We enter into the liminal spaces between our respective experiences around research to highlight the necessary tension and complexity in experience through narrative research that rests not in conclusions but rather in the possibilities generated by the ongoing telling and retelling of stories.

Authors

• Derek A. Hutchinson, The University of Kansas

• Cindy (Cynthia) Lynne Clarke, University of Saskatchewan