Pictures at an exhibition: Creative and reflective encounters with an academic conference

Author: Jerry O’Neill
Maynooth University, Ireland

Edition: Volume 66, Number 2, July 2026

Introduction: This paper draws on evocative autoethnography, writing as inquiry and a critically reflective adult education practice to explore the possibilities of engaging in, and with, an academic conference as a prolonged moment of creative, collective and reflective learning. Stumbling across a lost paper, I trace the development of a workshop that I delivered at a Narrative Inquiry conference some years ago and present the poetic artefacts that emerged from this nearly forgotten narrative and reflective act. Ultimately, this paper advocates, through form, style and content, the value of creative, narrative and autoethnographic modes of inquiry for adult education practitioners and researchers – a critically-engaged practice that starts by reflecting on the curriculum of our common-place experiences but is always spiralling out and deep into broader, social, cultural and structural concerns, commentaries and acts.

Keywords: narrative, evocative autoethnography, adult education, conferences

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 66:2 The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.