‘Razors in the Sand’: witnessing, engaging, and protecting one another in threatening times

How might we sustain engagement in critical qualitative research in times of heightened risk and uncertainty? How do we remain connected to the communities we serve? What processes sustain ourselves and each other as we work? This collaborative autoethnography explores three ways we respond to these questions: First, through sustaining caring dialogue that invites us to feel part of – and invested in – each other’s everyday entanglements in ways that we previously had not; second, through participation in supportive autoethnography communities that offer a quality of response, engagement, and relationship that we have found to be rare in academic culture; and third, by engaging in multimedia arts-based forms of inquiry which offer an emotional uplift alongside critical work. For us, aesthetic forms open channels for joy and pleasure, alongside activism and critique. Humour co-exists with sorrow, safety alongside threat.