Placing myself as a rejected doctoral student (2010-2022), this paper examines the emergent nature of identity formation across time and space. While presenting a layered account of my lived experience in seeking pathways of pursuing doctoral study, each reading experience leads me to produce my identity(ies) and situated knowledge(s) as an…

The need to include indigenous perspectives in curricula is a challenge facing education internationally. In the context of higher education, decolonising practices and processes are the responsibility not just of institutions but also individual academics. Despite individual aspirations to decolonise teaching, it can be difficult to know where to…

In this article, two autoethnographies from Australia and New Zealand provide a means of engaging students in difficult histories of colonial nations. The first looks to knowledge as a basis of understanding others, and the second focuses on concepts of empathy and vulnerability as a way of understanding difficult histories. Each of these…

Separation between human, physical, and GIS geographies is risky to geography's disciplinary survival. How can they be bridged through teaching in higher education? I dwell first upon the separation as rooted in the emergence of modern science and geography, the culture-nature binary, Kant's classification of knowledge, and positivistic science.…

This piece demonstrates a creative practice that invites educators from diverse backgrounds to consider the memories, stories, and cultural histories alive within them. How we carry and know our own stories influences how we can critically and reflexively enact or challenge policies of cultural responsivity in education. Given that the political…

Activist groups in ethnographic research re-negotiated our Ethics Committee's expected order of securing consent before data collection, demonstrating the importance of researchers taking time to build relationships first. Although the Ethics Committee expected us to obtain group consent, the literature provides little guidance on how to do this.…

This paper is a critical reflection of a critical ethnography, a study focused on how 'healthy lifestyle education' programmes were implemented and experienced in two primary schools. In an attempt to disrupt the "status quo" I employed a range of ethnographic methods: 'hanging out' with children and adults; building trusting…

Immigrant teachers have been more visible than ever before owing to transnational mobility. However, there is a lack of research on exploring their lived experiences in a broader context. With an auto-ethnographic approach, this study delves into the life of a non-native migrant in New Zealand over a period of 6 years. The qualitative data were…

In this article, the learning of conventional curriculum mathematics in one Indigenous Maori school in Aotearoa/New Zealand is conceptualized as a site of ontological struggle. The major finding of a research project which analyzed extensive ethnographic data gathered in partnership with this school identified an ontological disjunction between…

This article delineates my place attachment and sense of home in my Epsom campus, University of Auckland, in Aotearoa New Zealand, where I studied for my PhD in two periods of time: during the first year of my PhD programme, when my sense of home was established; and when I returned to Vietnam for my six-month research trip and was stranded due to…

In this article, we draw on findings from two critical ethnographic studies across three high schools in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. While the critical ethnographies canvased a range of topics, this article draws on the empirical findings specific to exploring how relationships and sexuality education as a key learning area within Health…

The first time of many significant encounters is the most intense, raising awkwardness, anxiety and hope. This article presents data from doctoral students (n = 80) who described the first time that they submitted writing to their supervisor and received feedback. The first writing/feedback exchange is an initiation into the cultures of academia.…

This article takes as its focus the doing of pedagogic affect. We are not so much concerned with what pedagogic affect "is" as what it "does" and how it might do more. We revisit Spinozist concepts of affect, as taken up by Deleuze and Braidotti, in the context of affirmative ethics. Bringing assemblage thinking together with…

This cross-cultural ethnography explored the global student mobility patterns of international students from English-speaking countries in China and asked research questions about (a) their motivational factors and acculturation expectations before arrival; (b) linguistic factors influencing their acculturative stressors in the host group…

Understanding, articulating and managing relationality, the state of being related, is a central feature of research, teaching and other people-centred matters in the Pacific. Although various groups in this diverse region, Indigenous and otherwise, bring their own concepts and protocols to relationships, physical, social and spiritual connection…