How do you Breathe? Duoethnography as a Means to Re-embody Research in the Academy

The desire to be more sensitive to the body, and to the embodied and embedded relationships that are constantly built in Academic life, brought us - a supervisor and a doctoral student – to share a common path of research, whose scope is to interrogate the role of the body in the academic experience. We started from the experience of breathing, a material and symbolic process. Where the body acts (we explored our practices), in fact, the ‘quality’ of breathing always becomes crucial. Inspiration/expiration, with 2 pauses in the middle. This quaternary structure is a metaphor of knowledge itself. Our breathing tells a story, on different levels, about the relationships between internal and external worlds. And this story is the basis of our research. Our research method is duoethnography (Sawyer, Norris, 2013). It incorporates theories of dialogue, life history, aesthetic representation, and transformation. Human experience is the ‘site of research’ (Norris, Sawyer & Lund, 2012), apt to foster an intimate experience, of reciprocal unveiling. This encourages collaboration and critical friendship, and challenges established roles. By juxtaposing our stories we achieved a provocative interrogation of our ideas and presuppositions about many aspects of our academic engagement. The experience itself of writing on our breathing co-created the sensation of ‘being alive’ in a traditional, formal, institutional, academic setting. Reflecting about our diversity reconnected us with our sense of humanity and with the deep mystery of eco-systemic life (Bateson). It opened new reflections about our daily interactions. In the end, we will ask to ourselves if and how a “Duoethnography of Breathing” really allows a different experience of university life, more embodied and embedded. A process of transformation (Mezirow), not only individual, which can re-enchant the relationship between student and supervisor in the academic setting