During my secondment in the Department of Political Science and International Relations (UOP, Greece), from 2nd of November until the 2nd of December, I developed the seminar “Listening to vulnerability. Personal narratives in Higher Education” to share an autoetnhographical research approach (Conle, 1999; Humphreys, 2005; Phelan, 1995; Pollock, 1998; Spry, 2001, Suominen, 2006) to consider students and teachers voices (from Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relationships, UOP, Greece) and generate personal ideas and narratives around the idea of the “vulnerability” inside Academy. What do we know about vulnerablility and vulnerable collectives in Higher Education? Through the notions of “presence” (aesthetic dimension), “gestures” (ethic dimension) and “ritual” (political dimension) inside the university, we opened the listening of our singular experiences in dialogue with literature review on this focus. By working with the initial narratives of students and teachers to expand our initial searches for the literature review, I am reminding myself that it is important to pay attention to life stories and the contexts in which the research is carried out from the outset. We must situate knowledge so that our theoretical frameworks are truly the result of a process of shared listening from the very beginning.
Noemí Duran Salvadó (Doctor of Arts and Education, UB, 2012; Postgraduate Degree in Sensory Languages and Poetics of Play, UdG-Teatre dels Sentits, 2011; Primary Education Teacher, URL, 2005; Audiovisual Communicator, UPF, 2005) is currently a lecturer in the Department of Theory and History of Education, Faculty of Education, UB. Her research focuses on the aesthetic dimension of education and its implications for the ethical and political dimensions of teaching and learning processes. She has published a particular book attending these issues, where she creates a singular epistemological and methodological approach “Rewriting between bodies” (https://casavoladora.wordpress.com/reescribirentrecuerpos/) for researching and teaching taking into account the aesthetic dimension of human beings. Since 2013, she has also worked as a researcher (Diverser Research Group) and teacher at the Faculty of Education of the University of Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia), a position she still holds today and which nourishes her dialogue between Southern Epistemologies and Western academia.