The Self, and Other Stories: Being, Knowing, Writing - Paperback

by Laura J. Shepherd (Author)

This open access book is an autoethnographic reflection on the value in the act of writing, illuminating the life of the researcher-in particular the researcher as human. Shepherd explores the multitudes of the academic, feminist self through expanding vocabularies of how scholars, researchers, writers, teachers, and academics can make sense of their worlds.

At the intersection of international relations theory and the personal, Shepherd presents seven reflexive essays on aspects of being and knowing as she has encountered them. The essays are grounded in and inspired by her experiences as a way of asking readers to imagine how knowledge production in the social sciences might look different if we could create and hold space for different ways of writing, being, and knowing. The disciplining practices which produce our limited modes of academic expression can be encountered otherwise. She calls on us to reflect on academic subjectification across the interconnected spaces we simultaneously inhabit and produce.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by University of Sydney

Author Biography

Laura J. Shepherd is professor of international relations at the University of Sydney, Australia, and visiting senior fellow in the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Much of her research focuses on the United Nations Security Council's Women, Peace and Security agenda, and attendant dynamics of gender, violence, and security governance. Laura is author or editor of many books, including, most recently, Narrating the Women, Peace and Security Agenda: Logics of Global Governance and New Directions in Women, Peace and Security (edited with Soumita Basu and Paul Kirby). Laura was elected president of the International Studies Association for a 2023-2024 term. She spends too much time on Twitter, where she tweets from @drljshepherd.