This presentation emerges in response to Network 30’s special call for papers to address how ESE researchers might respond to the mainstreaming of this field. In particular, we explore the call’s questions around philosophies of relationality, and what new ways of researching, understanding, and knowledge production are appropriate for the field moving forward in order to resist the reproduction of unsustainable imaginaries in the mainstream. We take up this challenge through the lens of relational-ecological philosophy of place (Abram, 1996), considering how relationality itself generates new possibilities for research.

To examine the generative potential of uncurated spaces in academic research, we consider how the shared experience of ‘becoming researcher’ enables a ‘site’ of relation to emerge that, when explored, can expand possibilities for and within the research itself. Such encounters unfold ‘in the margins’ (Kuntz, 2024) of formal academic structures, where the relations themselves become the site of ‘situated becomings’ (Haraway, 1988). Building on the work of Lee et al. (2013) on doctoral research journeys, we add a relational framework to examine how informal, interdisciplinary engagements—akin to, but more intentional than, ‘water cooler conversations’—provide an environment for emergent ideas and collaborative engagement beyond traditional research settings. These uncurated spaces foster not only intellectual collaboration but also a reorientation toward sustainability as a relational ethic. 

We propose that sustainability is a function of relationality and demands response-ability to diverse others. In framing relationality, we are informed by relational pedagogy (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004) and argue that relationality should be central to educational theory, pedagogy, and institutional organization, making all education an environmental education. Sustainability, when framed within dominant Western discourse, is often reduced to issues of environmental conservation driven by economic and technological innovation (Knutsson, 2018). However, we posit that sustainability and relationality are two nodes in a mutually constituted way of being, ecologically and/or educationally. To be sustainable is to be relation-centered and responsive to that which is physically, interpersonally, and ecologically present. To be relational is to respond to what is other than oneself, thus enacting that which is sustainable. This perspective aligns with longstanding traditions in Black feminist, ecofeminist, and Indigenous scholarship advocating for relational ethics over practices of domination and consumption (Shiva, 2005).

We bring this perspective forward into European higher education and doctoral research contexts, highlighting the way traditional academic structures either constrain or enable relational approaches.  Drawing from our own experiences in ESE and collaborative research, we explore how relations themselves serve as environments (or places) from which research emerges. We view places not merely as “some natural backdrop to our separate human dramas—but are rather of us, in us, through us” (Neimanis & Walker, 2014, 559), as dynamic and agentic participants in our experience of ‘becoming.’ We work from Barad’s (2017) idea of ‘becoming’ as the process of always-unfolding relations, where everything (including research itself) is in the process of co-constitutional change, influencing and influenced by the ongoing emergence of entangled relations. 

Our findings suggest that reimagining academic spaces as sites of relational emergence can transform Eurocentric doctoral education and, more broadly, research methodologies attuned to contemporary societal and environmental challenges. Thus, a relational pedagogy of doctoral research is one that facilitates spaces of relational emergence in the margins. Recognizing and facilitating these relations expands the possibilities for our Network to explore how research emerges with/in these sites, adopting a transformative approach to doctoral education that resists the reproduction of unsustainable neoliberal norms in mainstream European research.

Our research considers relational-ecological philosophy of place as both methodology and epistemological stance, embedding our inquiry within situated knowledges that are embodied, localized, and entangled. We conceptualize relations as places—both physical and conceptual—and generative sites of knowledge production, where human and non-human relations co-constitute research processes. Moving beyond conventional qualitative methods, we engage with post-qualitative inquiry (St. Pierre, 2011), foregrounding relationality as both the site and process of knowledge generation. Our approach resists extractive research paradigms and instead embraces diffraction (Barad, 2007) as a methodological lens that recognizes how knowledge emerges through entanglements rather than through linear causality or static representation. As doctoral researchers, we are not separate from our research but in an ongoing process of emergence through our entanglements with innumerable ‘others’. Thus, research is understood as an always-unfolding relational process. We engage in diffractive reading (Mazzei, 2014; Fox & Alldred, 2023), which is a departure from representational ‘readings’ towards more fluid, relational, and contextually situated modes of inquiry. Rather than comparing texts, disciplines, or ideas in opposition, diffractive reading works by reading one through the other, allowing them to interact and produce new meanings. This approach enables us to trace generative interference patterns, wherein philosophical traditions, academic discourses, and lived encounters intra-act to produce knowledge beyond simple reflection or comparison. Our ‘readings’ emerge from the situated (Haraway, 1988) relations between/among/co-constituting us and our varied experiences with/in relationality (both human and non-human). We explore how these nodes of relation become the site for possibilities of thought and understanding, which contribute to ‘becoming researchers.’ Like many doctoral students, we are simultaneously engaged in countless educational relations as students, educators, and researchers. We will discuss relational encounters such as meetings with supervisors and students, informal conversations ‘after hours’ at conferences, and how the various places we inhabit (UK, USA, Europe) entangle with research. By adopting a situated and relational methodology, we emphasize that knowledge is produced with and through the entanglements of human and non-human relations, places, and histories. Conceptualizing doctoral research as a process of ‘becoming’ through/within relational spaces challenges the solitary and competitive narrative of traditional (European) doctoral work. In centring relationality as both method and point of inquiry, we advocate for a transformative approach to knowledge production—one that acknowledges the entanglement of many others in shaping thought, research, and academic spaces.

In this presentation, we aim to expand traditional notions of research by highlighting how relations which emerge in peripheral spaces converge to shape the doctoral experience. We propose that sustainable research practices in education demand the centring of relationships—across human, ecological, and institutional dimensions—as the basis for knowledge generation. Our findings suggest that reimagining European academic spaces as sites of relational emergence can transform doctoral education and, more broadly, research methodologies attuned to contemporary societal challenges (as part of Network 30’s call). By considering both the supportive and transformative effects of such spaces, this presentation suggests that researchers within our Network might intentionally facilitate opportunities for relational engagement as a pivotal part of doctoral education, recognizing the importance of collaborative practice in research.

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