We ground our analysis in a project which used walking as a collective biography methodology to nurture a culture of feminist posthuman kinship. Feminist praxis in educational research enables feminist theory to be enacted through engagement with research methodologies and modes of knowledge production (Taylor, 2016) and aims to contest the pressures of neoliberal policies in academia and their centring of competition, individualism, market imperatives and performativity.

Our collective biography project sought to foster slow scholarship as an ethical approach to educational research and academic procedures (Mountz, et al., 2015).  Slow scholarship enables a deceleration of the pressured metricised and market-focused mechanisms which drive neoliberal academia (Harman & Darab 2012). Slow scholarship is not simply reactive or passive: rather, it is focused on experimenting with ways of doing contemporary academic production differently and demands a reconsideration of the balance required to think, process, and deliver in ways which enable and empower.  Slow scholarship offers alternatives to measuring ‘success’ through numbers of publications or citations or amount of grant captured. It argues such measures result in erroneous notions of the ‘unproductive’ scholar and induces shame for those who are immeasurable against the standard expectation (Meyerhoff et. al., 2011; Mountz, et. al., 2015). Included in acts of slow scholarship is the duty of care which is at the heart of feminists’ politics (Taylor, 2020). Within the academic sphere, care requires there to be a balance between - the care we bestow on our research practice and findings, the products we are creating, and our relational connections. A feminist politics of care attends to the emergent complexities of our lives which enable our being to become - our loves, our politics, our beliefs and hopes.

The choice of collective biography as a methodology enabled seven researchers from different disciplines, backgrounds and at various stages of academia, to work-think-play creatively with walking practices, to produce an assemblage of data productions, and to engage in collaborative writing simultaneously. The project was informed by posthumanist research approaches which decentred the human and sought to place the human in relation to nature, the environment, nonhuman entities, animals, microbes, things and objects. Posthumanist approaches require other than normative research procedures, hence our use of collective biography and the emergent nature of our findings which developed as new awarenesses and knowings emerged from our being with and doing the research.  As a research practice collective biography, required time, preparation, commitment and care, and for each of us to embrace a patient and curious attention to the emergence of knowings or matterings (Barad, 2007), as they arose.

The collective biography experimentations, began from our individual disciplines, which when shared enabled a feminist ‘we’ to be collectively brought into being and experienced.  This ‘we’ could not be forced - it was an emergent becoming of feminist posthuman kinship evolving from a shared commitment to a transdisciplinary ethic of affirmative engagement.  Courage and trust were requisites for the emergence of the ‘we’, which became as individually held knowledge, experience or awareness is re-formed, re-shaped and re-animated with others’ to become a co-creation of our knowledge.  In this space and process, as I’s are transformed to we’s, a feminist posthuman kinship emerged from nonhuman-human relationalities that come to matter during the project.   

As a feminist praxis, collective biography nurtured a culture of feminist posthuman kinship during the challenges of separation, isolation, fear and anxiety of Covid times. The projects insights concerning slow scholarship, non-hierarchical knowledge productions, practices of nurturing a culture of care and collegial mentoring (Taylor, 2020) are, we suggest, essential ethical, political practices for fostering feminist praxis in educational research.

Collective biography is a productive endeavour from which thoughts and knowings occur as a direct result of engagement with others. Gannon and Davis (2006) describe how particular thoughts could only emerge because of they are together, and not working alone. Our collective biography project was constructed around three distinct phases. The first phase of the project utilised a walking methodology. We each undertook three separate walks, lasting about 30 minutes and was performed in isolation, as determined by the Covid19 restrictions. We decided the time of each walk so we would be participating in the experience at similar times, despite being apart and in different geographical locations. Before undertaking these together-apart walks, a theme was agreed on, so we were all focusing on similar matters as we walked. During our walks we collected data, which included photos, videos, sound files and afterwards we each wrote reflections. This empirical material was stored in an online cache and shared with all members of the group. After each walk, we would meet virtually, together-apart on-screen, to discuss the resonances and provocations the walk produced and, in this way, we developed our collaborative biographies as we recounted and described embodied sensory experiences. We amassed a store of reflections, wonderings, and considerations, entangled with physical happenings which occurred and emerged as our bodies moved through time and space. In the recounted narratives and online discussions, our thoughts meandered, focusing on specific moments before being redirected to other happenings of importance, as topics emerged and ebbed only to be replaced by new considerations. In this way we constructed connections and made discoveries – made possible by collaboratively talking-thinking-speculating together as a ‘we’. In this second phase, the recordings of these together-apart conversations were also stored online. The third phase occurred as lockdown restrictions began lifting, and we were able to gather for our first face-to-face meeting to experiment with our empirical materials. We used different arts-based practice-ings: collage (Culshaw, 2019), string-figuring (Fairchild, et., al, 2021) and other collaborative data productions and writings to develop greater knowledge of our empirical material. The embodied, situated and contextual knowledges which emerged from the experimental research practices, and the nonhuman-human relational connections which merged through walking, listening, talking, sharing, making and engaging together, (Nunn, 2017) were both an instantiation of a developing posthuman kinship and became the starting point for our ongoing collaborative writing.

The outcomes of this project have produced a greater realisation that feminist posthumanist kinship can be enabled and enacted in educational research with dynamic approaches and considerations for the principles of feminist theory. To be realised this endeavour has required the application of feminist praxis which incorporates a commitment to ethical methodology, collaborative engagements with non-hierarchical knowledge productions, and a care-full and response-able willingness to work across differences of discipline, biography, experiences and accomplishments. The praxis of feminist posthumanist educational research contests and intentionally disrupts the dominant humanist view of knowledge creation which are elitist, masculinist and colonialist and perpetuate social reproductions of inequality which limit knowledge production to a specific world view of ‘reality’ (Nunn, 2017, Taylor, 2016). This project would not have been realised without intentionally practicing slow scholarship with care and consideration, which enabled time for connections, conversations, and collaborative engagement to support the fermentation of new knowledges and awarenesses. At the heart of collaborative biography as feminist praxis is the need for care, and forging posthuman kinship is a matter of care which expands the orbit as to who and what is included in what comes to matter. Care as an active energising practise - care for: self and others, the research and the practice of research, the endeavours and activities which contribute to a balanced and full life. The outcomes of this project are important and can contribute to practices in educational research which can help address crisis that are confronting the world today. The project outcomes suggest that feminist praxis and posthuman kinship are practices urgently needed in educational research, and wider academia, where accelerated productions and competitive neoliberal policies undermine the thoughtfulness, carefulness and connections needed to address inequality and enhance social justice for all earthly beings.

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