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Embodied Scholarship: A Reflective, Person-Centred Practice for the Practitioner-Scholar [PCC234]

Wednesday May 6, 2026 12:15 - 13:30 Poster Arena

Presenter: Duncan McKellar

Track: Poster

This presentation explores embodied scholarship as a dynamic, person-centred process of scholarly inquiry grounded in lived experience. Drawing on reflective practice and autoethnographic methodology, the presentation examines the journey of a practitioner-scholar navigating personal, relational, and cultural terrains through reflexive engagement. Autoethnography privileges the scholar’s own narrative as a site for meaning-making and cultural insight. Here, embodied scholarship becomes a ‘river of inquiry,’ welling up from an ontological source, in this case, theological personalism, supported by storytelling as an epistemological approach, flowing through crisis and epiphany toward new knowledge, insight and growth, before moving on to subsequent cycles of embodied scholarship. The presentation aligns with the Person-Centred Practice Framework (McCormack & McCance 2021), emphasising knowing self, authentic relationships and transformational learning. Reflexivity, transparency, and creative expression are central, enabling the practitioner-scholar to engage with their own limitations, biases, and evolving identity. Key issues to be explored include: Embodied scholarship as a practice-based, person-centred orientation integrating the personal, professional, relational, and cultural dimensions of practice and scholarship. Writing as a method of inquiry, using expressive, creative, and evocative storytelling to bring forth meaning, evoke empathy, and foster connection between the personal and scholarly. Reflective practice as a bridge linking lived experience with scholarly insight through reflexivity, transparency, and critical self-awareness. The presentation will draw on the presenter’s method and work as author of An Everyone Story: Finding our way back to compassion, hope and humanity, a commercially published, award-winning autoethnographic account of the transformation of an Australian healthcare service for older people with complex needs. The narrative traces the journey from toxic, dysfunctional culture to one that is person-centred, humanised, and compassionate. The presentation will interest practitioners seeking to engage in meaningful scholarship emerging from lived experiences within clinical practice and care.
Language

English

Conference

GCPCC

GCPCC Code

PCC234

Lecturers

Duncan McKellar Presenter

Duncan McKellar, Erna Haraldsdottir, Karen Rennie