An autoethnography of quasi-autoethnographies: seeding an impact-oriented complex collaborative research ecosystem

Complex collaborative research, involving many partners, presents a significant challenge for understanding the distinctive role and value of design research. Participants find it increasingly difficult to extrapolate who did what, and what happened as a result of each intervention. In these contexts, the person with the most complete view of design research is the design researcher themselves, and autoethnography can be a useful ally when other forms of evidence are inaccessible. This paper presents an autoethnography exploring how my quasi-autoethnographies have allowed me to build my ‘academic voice’. In the process I reflect on seven roles of autoethnography, taken from the literature, and expand with three roles based on my experiences of building a research ecosystem using an autoethnography-before-impact approach.