Purpose This creative entry experiments with what becomes possible when the human is decentred in educational experiences and how virtual ∼ relational spaces provoke unexpected encounters that unsettle dominant, power-based boundaries in knowledge production. It highlights the quieter, softer, immanent productions of collaboration that bodies, places and brute relational disruptions enact as care. Design/methodology/approach On March 4th, the second author facilitated a guest co-learning lecture for Global Perspectives in Post-qualitative Research: students gathered in person, and a guest (the first author) joined virtually – they were all together yet apart. What unfolded was less a lecture and more a co composed experiment in relationality, a brute force of human and nonhuman entanglements lived collectively and unpredictably. We present the event as conceptual contribution, mapped through four movements: (1) emerging post qualitative researcher; (2) enacting post qualitative researcher; (3) explaining and experiencing post qualitative researcher and (4) expanding post qualitative researcher. Rather than concluding, we linger in the messy and indeterminate, asking how virtual connections shift mentoring, care and the circulation of knowledge in post qualitative encounters. Findings Each movement reveals co authorial presence, the gentle quieting of human centred authority and the brute disruptions that occur when collaboration exceeds control. These disruptions signal intensity of emergence, showing what becomes visible when expectation, hierarchy and human-centred certainty are suspended. Research limitations/implications As a conceptual contribution, this work emits and provokes rather than substantiates. It resists finite conclusions, offering a lived, relational encounter attentive to the agencies of virtual spaces and the limits of human knowledge within post-human, post-qualitative inquiry. Practical implications Decentring the human emerges as both method and lived co-creative process in relational teacher education contexts for others to consider and implement. Social implications This supports relational, ethical and place-honouring teacher education. This exploration into decentring researchers in virtual spaces through post-human, relational and post-qualitative theory promotes the quietening of hierarchical power structures and supports those in preparatory positions to remain aware of and work within and/or without them. Originality/value This is among the first explorations of decentring researchers in virtual spaces through post-human, relational, post-qualitative theory.
Crinall et al. (Tue,) studied this question.