Walking Alongside: Relational Research Spaces in Visual Narrative Inquiry

Abstract

Walking alongside is a phrase used in narrative inquiry to describe relational commitments that shape how we attend to the complexity of lives, unfolding over time, and within a web of social relations. The space of inquiry requires researchers to attend to participants’ lives and stories of experience across various social situations, places, and times. In this paper, I explicate and unpack my intimate, and sometimes complex, journey and unfolding research process. In this study, walking alongside was a process of embodying the relational ethics of narrative inquiry, which attended to silences, remained playful, and responded to and through uncertainty. I provide insight into building relational spaces in visual narrative inquiry by combining art-making with Lugones’ theories on world travelling to creatively and nimbly respond to stories and walk alongside participants. As a narrative inquirer, I walked alongside three trans young adults, to co-create, re-imagine, and transform research in relation to participants. This process is undergirded by attention to and a deepening awareness of relational ethics, and by creating spaces that allow for emergent possibilities of being in relation to honor diverse and multiple ways of knowing.