Learning and doing autoethnography: resonance, vulnerability and exposure

This chapter highlights three concepts (resonance, exposure and vulnerability) that are particularly relevant for those who are early career researchers or academics in the initial stages of their exploration of autoethnography. Colleagues, family members, friends and strangers are often included or impacted from our stories, which is why they are often considered as pertinent subjects in autoethnographic ethical processes. Autoethnography is a way of analysing the personal and how it relates to the wider socio-cultural experience. Autoethnography can be published as an individual narrative, or as duo-ethnography, or as multi-voice autoethnography. Recent studies have shown the potential of autoethnography in management and organization studies by exploring, for instance, embodied and emotional experiences of non-binary gender identity, birthing, and mental health. Exposure to risk and challenges to systemic or subject-specific conventions can be not only worrisome, but also highly rewarding.