Learning from Using Feminist Duoethnography in Organization Research: Exploring Women’s Experiences of Everyday Racism and Changing Racial Identities

Duoethnography, a collaborative form of autoethnography, uses personal experience as a starting point and highlights the development of a shared dialogue that allows for the emergence of novel in- terpretations. Guided by a feminist duoethnographic approach, this study has been following feminist collaborative work principles that challenge power dynamics among those involved and the notion of “voice” or, more specifically, those “unspoken vulnerabilities.” A feminist duoethnographic stance em- phasizes the validity of women’s experiences as knowledge and seeks to acknowledge multiple per- spectives through coauthored dialogic narratives. However, adopting a feminist duoethnographic ap- proach has a number of challenges. The impetus for such collaboration between two researchers was happenstance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as Chinese female academics living and working in the United Kingdom, both researchers confronted varying levels of verbal and physical race-based vio- lence. Embodied vulnerabilities seem to have been exercised in those times of crisis. Using this study, this case study explores the fluidity of racial identities, taken-for-granted racial stereotypes and White privilege, and everyday racism in the United Kingdom. The process by which researchers generate autoethnographic vignettes followed by reflective conversations has been presented. This approach could be beneficial in advancing social justice, equity, and inclusion in both professional and academic settings.