The work I am sharing with you today centers embodied and enacted knowledge, so my intention here is to provide a felt experience of the project and a context for making sense of it with me. The dissertation has an unconventional structure, so following the logic of the text involves a bit of disorientation. To make sure we enter the fray attuned to our individual and collective wellbeing, we’ll start by grounding in the present moment, including words from a special guest student leader, which will take about 13 minutes. Then I’ll spend about 10 minutes describing the dissertation text itself, and finally, I’ll end with a brief elaboration of a feedback technique I’ve developed through the project that I hope will guide us gently into the Q&A. The work is intended to be multivocal, center student wisdom, and function as an opportunity to care for our bodyminds as we learn.

And so we have returned to where we started — with attention to access as a precondition for belonging, naming of place and position as ways to connect across difference, and respect for self-determination within a relational field.