Circling Conversation: An exercise in feminist curiosity
If you lack self-reflection, this blog is not for you.
This blog presents reflections on a year-long conversational practice we adopted as a feminist method to discuss critical issues relevant to our experiences as early career researchers (ECRs) and practitioners within the Gender, Justice, and Security Hub. Guided by intersectional feminist values, an intention to resist normative impulses such as ‘to control’, ‘to direct’, or ‘to react’, and a genuine interest in embracing communication that embodies core feminist values, our conversation circles have organically evolved to form a transformative space. The conversation circles have taken the form of monthly online gatherings lasting two hours, across multiple time zones from Colombia to Australia. In what follows, we offer insights into this journey, covering the overarching framework and some of the themes discussed. The emphasis lies in the equal significance of the ‘how’ and ‘why’ we create, in relation to the ‘what’ is ultimately produced, and what it really means to act with intention in the spaces we are a part of.
During our time at the Gender, Justice and Security Hub (referred to as the Hub), we have orbited each other’s workspaces. Some through friendship, some in project work, some having never crossed paths in person at all. Each one of us with a different relationship to the Hub and with a different set of stories to tell depending on where we sat.
But there has always been that common thread that all who are considered ‘early’ in their career, and who work in an academic space, no matter how radical it claims to be, feel. Precarity, in multiple and different forms, inclusivity, and accountability within feminist and/or academic spaces are all words we found ourselves repeating. So we came together to create around these experiences.
During our first meeting we found ourselves entangled in the excessive emphasis on outputs as opposed to the processes of thinking, feeling, relating, and co-creating, where the focus was heavily on organising for an end goal. This had a notable impact on the atmosphere, quality, and frequency of our gatherings. It prompted us to reflect on how this structure conditions us; in this case, much of this conditioning stems from institutional policies adopting narrow understandings of, and measures for, impact. We yearned for something different that privileges our curiosity over mechanical productivity – something more experimental, so we decided to just talk. We didn’t realise it at the time, but this was a blueprint for avoiding rigid structures, suspending assumptions and expectations, and remaining open to receiving and sharing words and silences, intellectually and affectively.
As we continue to sit in monthly conversation circles, each presents its own tests and provocations. The commitment to this journey, our focus on process not just output, has required us to confront some of our flaws – specifically those that may replicate rigid, often binary, and suffocating structures of thought. These challenges, and our continued un/re/learning, include discomfort with silence and the tendency to rush to fill it, as well as an inclination to negation, defensiveness, and avoiding dealing with expressions of unease or ‘negative’ feelings within the group. We have also had to face our own tendencies towards self-control and policing – a learned behaviour shaped by our environments that we needed to unlearn. In this sense, our conversations have become a way to come back into ourselves. Because of that, our interest and attachment to our conversation circles grew.
A whole conversation on intentionality emerged as we consistently showed up despite workloads, odd hours (time zones clashes), and individual and shared work/life/world layered experiences. This is a space we want to be in despite the structural and administrative barriers; colonial notions of time that centre European time zones, placing disproportionate strain on those on opposite ends of the time zone scale; and questions around how to distribute administrative load fairly remain unresolved – who will liaise with the funder, report back, ‘lead’ etc. Workloads, maternity leave, and other commitments, whilst initially an impediment and a source of collective strain, have been encountered with a spirit of generosity. Conversation circles hold no expectations – there is a complete absence of punitive approaches towards different levels of engagement, missing sessions or not catching up with what has come before. All that is required is to hold space for one another (not just verbally). Empathy is a ground rule.
Without casting out the possibility of diverse linguistic and non-verbal expressions, English has been our common language in these conversations. To this day, we have not reflected on our use of the English language within the group, and the evident accessibility barriers this presents to a group formed of majority speakers of English as a foreign language. Not to mention the ways in which English has inevitably prescribed our conversations and in doing so excluded some of our respective cultures and ways of expressing. We are not alone in this omission, as research on the Eurocentrism of academic knowledge (re)production practices has shown, and yet in this continued act we have rendered all other languages “other, foreign, and unfamiliar”.
“Conversation circles hold no expectations – there is a complete absence of punitive approaches towards different levels of engagement, missing sessions or not catching up with what has come before. All that is required is to hold space for one another (not just verbally). Empathy is a ground rule.”
Moreover, in our effort to share reflections on our practice of conversation as a feminist method we acknowledge the irony and paradox inherent in the act of solidifying fluid dialogues into a structured text, anchoring them to a specific moment in time and thought. The core of conversation lies in the dynamic of interaction, silence, and diversity of experiences, working, thinking and relating – not only between thoughts but also in the evolution of thought itself as the conversation unfolds. There is also the creative chaos within conversation that enables connections and departures in non-hierarchical and non-prescriptive ways, with neither beginning nor end, which may be undermined with academic writing styles that can disavow anything personal or remotely emotive.
That is also why we do not offer a recipe for a perfect conversation practice – there is no such thing. We merely share common observations on what made this practice effective in our case, both on a personal and professional level. The transformation we sought, imperfectly achieved, and continue to pursue, is one that has multiplied and diversified alternative ways of being, thinking, and creating outputs, and what has since followed is a space that has become about the sharing of stories beyond neat narratives and linear understandings. Removing this necessity has become freeing, allowing us to converse and share in imperfect ways, without expectations that our comments have to lead to an answer. Our feminist curiosity has become our nourishment where it is ok to disagree, or to find the space hard or problematic at times, because it is here we can learn how to truly enact practice-based solidarity and care in our work within the systems in which we are embedded; as well as our lives, our work, our ambitions, our happiness and sadness.
“The transformation we sought, imperfectly achieved, and continue to pursue, is one that has multiplied and diversified alternative ways of being, thinking, and creating outputs, and what has since followed is a space that has become about the sharing of stories beyond neat narratives and linear understandings.“
So, as we proceed, we invite you to be in a conversation with this piece – take a moment to pause, reflect and share how, when and why some thoughts or affects resonate with you or not, or what difference they generate. In reading this, your experiences shape your understanding of ours, and therein lies our celebration of conversation as a relational, connective, and generative method. As Sium and Ritskes propose:
as an audience of various people’s and experiences, you engage these stories from the same place of honesty and openness that they flow from. Let them soak in, take time to process the words, maybe sit with that cup of tea.
Just as our conversations have outgrown the structures that gave rise to them, so too will they outlive the dimensions of our project. Organically we have formed connections that we hope to nurture not just in our professional, but also in our personal lives for many years to come. In a (at the time sub-conscious) refusal of the system, we privileged our feminist curiosity over productivity, and centred conversation. What has followed is a process of conversation-making that overcomes individual intellect and thought, and in an act of resistance, instead shows us what can be achieved when we think about, through, with, and in relation to others.
About the authors:
Nicky Armstrong. I am a Co-Investigator on the Gender, Justice and Security Hub as well as a communications consultant. I am also a part-time PhD Student at Queen Mary University where I explore visual communication and the role of communications professionals in advocacy campaigning. I am perpetually making hot water bottles.
Roua Al Taweel. Final-year PhD candidate at the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI)/Ulster University, investigating the intertwined injustices of gender discrimination in Syria’s nationality law and forced displacement, with the aim to inform a transformative approach to transitional justice in Syria. When I’m not seeking answers in research, you find me among trees.
Julia Xavier Stier. I am an interdisciplinary human rights practitioner with expertise in migrant and refugee work, human trafficking, and gender rights. A Brazilian German based in London, currently working for the London School of Economics and Political Science as the Central Support Officer for the Gender, Justice and Security Hub.
Alba Rosa Boer Cueva. I have a PhD from UNSW-Sydney, on conceptualisations of women’s empowerment and (in)security in conflict-affected contexts. I live on the stolen lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people in so-called Australia. I should still be on maternity leave, but precarious employment and no daycare means having to juggle it all. When we’re not at home, you’ll find my daughter and I out in the world protesting against the genocide in Palestine.
This piece has emerged from the participation and contributions of all members of the conversation circles referenced, with acknowledgment to Tanya Bhat, Sinduja Raja, Luisa Salazar Escalante and María Gabriela Vargas Parada for being great conversationalist, colleagues and friends.
Thank you also to William McInerney for his review of this text, and his considerate feedback and reflections that echoed our approach to collaborative working so well. This feedback could have easily been a part of this text. Thank you.