Analytical Autoethnodrama: Autobiographed and Researched Experiences with Academic Writing

This book identifies analytical autoethnography as a methodology that synthesises autobiography and social critique in order to resist, and also change, dominant authoritative discourse. The author has interviewed academics in order to elicit autobiographical experiences with academic writing and the so-called ‘publish or perish culture’. Evidence from the author’s autobiographical experiences and the interview data have been used to inform a short autoethnodrama set in a university on the UK. The autoethnodrama considers the ‘impact’ of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and current such exercises, and the possible and real effects of the pressure to ‘publish or perish’ on institutional culture and individual lives. The book identifies staff development strategies that offer the potential for a less stressful academic writing process and democratic university environment including mentoring and other explicit institutional support. In addition the author identifies the process of producing this work as a means of further democratising the conventional academic writing process and progressing the case for a more inclusive and expansive approach to academic writing. The author proposes a more holistic and person-centred approach to academic writing and also to academic life. Autoethnography is an evolving methodology in qualitative research that values creative and personal writing in academic research.