Using reflective letter-writing as a method of generating data, a group of four researchers embarked on a collaborative autoethnographic inquiry into the emotional dimensions of researching social aspects of HIV & AIDS. In this article, we use the medium of a narrative dialogue to represent and re-examine our reflective letter-writing method. The dialogue draws attention to key features of reflective letter-writing as a collaborative autoethnographic research method and, in so doing, highlights and explores the nature, potential significance, and challenges of this method. Our discussion points to the value of a collaborative process of reflective letter-writing as a way for researchers to access and portray emotional aspects of their research experience, to deepen their engagement with these emotional dimensions, and to gain insight into their own and others' lived research experiences.

The meanings connected with becoming or being an academic are constantly shifting, on account of diverse forces that act on universities. In this article, we portray our learning as a research team of four academics (including one early-career academic) and a doctoral student who took a narrative inquiry approach to listening and responding to our early-career colleagues' stories of becoming and being academics within a transforming university landscape.Imaginative engagement with these stories through the evocative and reflexive medium of poetry awakened possibilities for navigating the uncertain terrain of academia. The article draws attention to collegial relationships as critical to the growth of self-belief and self-resourcefulness in becoming and being academics. It demonstrates how, through collective participation, novice and experienced academics can become valuable sources of learning and support for each other.

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ABSTRACT:We offer an account of how we, a research team of three South African academics, have dialogued with multiculturalism and equity through collective poetic autoethnographic inquiry. The focus of the article is on our learning through reading and responding to published autoethnographies by three other South African academics. We share our learning about how poetry and dialogue can facilitate a generative entanglement with autoethnographies written by others. The article highlights the promise of collective poetic autoethnographic inquiry for opening up spaces for dialoguing with multiculturalism and equity.

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