‘It Shapes Who I Am Now’: A Family-Relational Autoethnography of Learning Through International Doctoral Education

Drawing on a family-relational autoethnographic approach informed by community psychology and transformative learning, this study explores how an Indonesian family's doctoral migration to Aotearoa New Zealand was experienced and interpreted across family relationships. Bringing together the researcher's reflections and the retrospective narratives of her husband and daughter, the analysis is organised into four episodes: Shared Calling, Crossing Uncertainty, Relational Learning and Identity Reconstruction. The findings highlight how doctoral mobility extended beyond academic achievement, involving uncertainties, changing family responsibilities, intercultural encounters and learning through everyday relationships. Family members made sense of these experiences in different ways, revealing both the opportunities and challenges of migration. This study conceptualises doctoral mobility as a relational family experience and introduces relational knowledge production to describe how research and its interpretation are shaped by relationships and experiences extending beyond formal academic settings.