Cultivating selves-in-relation-with-others as Community, Work and Family scholars through collective writing

In this paper, we ask, ‘What are the possibilities for embodying our better selves as community, work, and family scholars through writing together in the same place at the same time?’ Our collective enquiry cultivated inclusion and kindness in our enactment of learning, research, and knowledge production as a project that is personal, political, and collective. By coming together in a live collective writing session held at the 9th Community, Work and Family conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we experienced writing ourselves into our research that embraced collaboration and vulnerability. We share our collection of stories produced in the live collective writing session and reflect on our enactment of community, not as an abstract social unit, but as a living social experience with others. We also reflect on the aims and outcomes of conferences and the value of attempting to write, not just as co-authors, but as a collective. In doing so, we question how collective writing can contribute differently to and beyond the hegemonic value of contribution to theory that is so reified within the academy.