Wobbling Forward: Vulnerability and Multiple Selves of Transnational Researchers

This collaborative autoethnography explores how we—Ellin, a recent PhD graduate, and Jing, a current doctoral student—both from the same English Education program at a graduate school in New York City, navigate vulnerability as both an inherent condition and a methodological stance within American academia. Through the lens of Dialogical Self Theory (DST), we examine how our multiple I-positions engage in continuous dialogue, revealing vulnerability not as weakness but as a pathway to understanding and authentic scholarship. Our narratives demonstrate how the destabilization of our established identities creates productive discomfort that challenges dominant academic paradigms while fostering deeper understanding of belonging, representation, and knowledge production. By embracing vulnerability as both lived experience and research approach, we contribute to expanding conceptualizations of who can produce knowledge and how our transnational perspectives enrich academic discourse.