Researching, Learning, and Healing Within the Master’s House

Abstract

This paper tells the story of resistance and efforts to work and mend within an anti-Black institution: higher education. Through a collaborative autoethnographic approach, seven Black academics connected to the Action Research Collective team (a group focused on supporting graduate students and cultivating equitable campus climates), explored how doing research as a team served as a mechanism for healing from the trauma of anti-Black racism. This paper illustrates how researching, learning, and healing can manifest within research teams by emphasizing visibility, shared experience, authenticity, and community.

Keywords

• Blackness, collaborative autoethnography, research team