Tread lightly: Liminality and Covid‐19 reflections

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic has reshaped people's lives in a multitude of different ways, and women especially have found themselves managing in‐between identities, spaces, and realities due to increased domestic, homeschooling, and work demands. In this paper, I share fragmented observations on COVID‐19 inequalities on a societal level, but I anchor those observations with my personal reflections. I use liminality as a theoretical anchor and an artistic methodological tool to explore being in‐between experiences, thoughts, and modes of writing. I stage my reflections as a 10 KM run, with points of discussion set at each kilometer. The run is symbolic of the liminal space the pandemic represents, where bodies and minds, whether knowingly or unknowingly, are in an in‐between journey – from places of origin to unfamiliar destinations. This paper adds to feminist efforts of writing differently which shows that knowledge can be produced and conveyed beyond the rigid script of academic convention. It also expands the use of liminality beyond a theoretical lens and into a methodological approach that considers writing as a melding between different genres, states, and modes of knowing.

Connected early‐career experiences of equality in academia during the pandemic and beyond: Our liminal journey

“…While the pandemic physically isolated us from our workplace and colleagues, it has freed us from a hindering working environment and allowed us to reflect on what is important to us in our careers, and enabled the emergence of “ a kind of equality ” (see, Powley, 2009) by tearing down hierarchical structures that led to caring and supporting collegial relationships, which empowered us to adapt to adverse situations. Despite a dominating narrative that sees the competition and not collaboration as the key to individual and organizational success (Jamjoom, 2021, p. 14), we feel lucky to be surrounded by peers with whom we have built a collective environment where we share our work burden and also smaller and more significant successes.…”

“…Since the embodied and affective accounts shared in this paper are based on our own experiences, there is no better way than to open up space for alternative knowledge creation and dialogs by building on the work of Gilmore et al. (2019), Jamjoom (2021), Mandalaki (2021), Pullen et al. (2020), van Amsterdam and van Eck (2019), or van Eck et al.…”

“…In her work, liminality is used as an apparatus to explain the moving processes of the experience of the self and writing about the experience of the moments of the self. Jamjoom (2021), offers a different perspective by adapting, adapts liminality as “a theoretical anchor and an artistic methodological tool” (p. 1314) to explore being in‐between experiences, thoughts, and writing patterns. She uses a metaphor of a 10 km run where each kilometer is a symbol of a liminal space the pandemic represents.…”

“…Our pandemic story demonstrates that individual experiences can never be exactly the same, but we hope that others are able to benefit from reading our personal vignettes (Janzen, 2016) and able to resonate with them. Since the embodied and affective accounts shared in this paper are based on our own experiences, there is no better way than to open up space for alternative knowledge creation and dialogs by building on the work of Gilmore et al (2019), Jamjoom (2021), Mandalaki (2021), Pullen et al (2020), van Amsterdam and van Eck (2019), or van Eck et al (2021) on "writing differently." We, therefore, take this paper as an opportunity to contest the limitations of conventional masculine academic research and writing practices for producing embodied and affective accounts' (van Eck et al, 2021(van Eck et al, , p. 1099.…”

The maze: Reflections on navigating intersectional identities in the workplace

“…I sought to reconsider the theoretical lens of intersectionality and examine its application to the “other side” of power relations (Sang & Calvard, 2019). This endeavor enabled me to create a space for the articulation of experiences that are often silenced in academic discourse and relatively under‐explored, including those related to motherhood (Boncori & Smith, 2019; Jamjoom, 2022), social class, religious beliefs (Özdemir, 2022), disability (Kasnitz, 2020), foreignness, and ethnicity (Cruz et al., 2020).…”