Conference Junk Journaling #2
Navigating the Ethnography in Education Research Forum 2025 via journaling
Junk journaling can be described as a form of collage-making that uses found, scrap, and “junk” materials—items that are often discarded or forgotten.
I began junk journaling during my trips to conferences as a way of processing and documenting my experiences navigating privileged academic spaces as a first-generation graduate student. This particular junk journal was created during and after my most recent trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the Ethnography in Education Forum (February 7th-8th, 2025).
As may (or may not) be visible, it includes collected plane, train, and metro tickets, maps of the city and the venue, a receipt and paper bag from lunch with a new friend and peer, conference pamphlets, my name tag, a Polaroid I took at the Philly train station, and, of course, notes and sketches I made during the sessions I attended.
The process of cutting, gluing, and arranging these elements—as well as revisiting my notes, re-writing, and pasting key words and themes—helped me make sense of my experience. It also became a visual representation of the creative methods that inspired me most at the conference and that will likely influence my developing doctoral project.
Here are some links, and references to some of the work that caught my eye:
https://www.skylarkaat.com/
http://www.write4change.org/
https://novalitmag.org/
Baldrige, B. (2017). Toward a New Understanding of Community-Based Education: The Role of Community-Based Educational Spaces in Disrupting Inequality for Minoritized Youth
Cooper, M. (2024). “Do you not see this Pretty Black Trans Girl?”: Reading Desire Beyond School in One Black Trans Girl’s TikTok Grammar of Futurity. In Pursuing
Language and Metalinguistics in K–12 Classrooms. Routledge.
Hou, S. (2024, April 30). The Semi-Conductor Radio Made in Shanghai. Anthropology News. https://www.anthropology-news.org/articles/the-semi-conductor-radio-made-in-shanghai/
Turner, E. O. (2020). Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts Manage Race and
Inequality. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226675534
I began junk journaling during my trips to conferences as a way of processing and documenting my experiences navigating privileged academic spaces as a first-generation graduate student. This particular junk journal was created during and after my most recent trip to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the Ethnography in Education Forum (February 7th-8th, 2025).
As may (or may not) be visible, it includes collected plane, train, and metro tickets, maps of the city and the venue, a receipt and paper bag from lunch with a new friend and peer, conference pamphlets, my name tag, a Polaroid I took at the Philly train station, and, of course, notes and sketches I made during the sessions I attended.
The process of cutting, gluing, and arranging these elements—as well as revisiting my notes, re-writing, and pasting key words and themes—helped me make sense of my experience. It also became a visual representation of the creative methods that inspired me most at the conference and that will likely influence my developing doctoral project.
Here are some links, and references to some of the work that caught my eye:
https://www.skylarkaat.com/
http://www.write4change.org/
https://novalitmag.org/
Baldrige, B. (2017). Toward a New Understanding of Community-Based Education: The Role of Community-Based Educational Spaces in Disrupting Inequality for Minoritized Youth
Cooper, M. (2024). “Do you not see this Pretty Black Trans Girl?”: Reading Desire Beyond School in One Black Trans Girl’s TikTok Grammar of Futurity. In Pursuing
Language and Metalinguistics in K–12 Classrooms. Routledge.
Hou, S. (2024, April 30). The Semi-Conductor Radio Made in Shanghai. Anthropology News. https://www.anthropology-news.org/articles/the-semi-conductor-radio-made-in-shanghai/
Turner, E. O. (2020). Suddenly Diverse: How School Districts Manage Race and
Inequality. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226675534