Cite Your Well-being First: What Happens When Personal Life, Mental Health, and HCI Research Become Entangled?

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research often requires deep engagement with people and their environments, making the researcher’s own well-being an integral, yet overlooked factor in the research process. Personal challenges, ranging from academic pressures to difficult life events, can influence how we conduct studies, interpret data, and relate to our work. Despite this, such experiences are rarely acknowledged in formal academic spaces, and there is limited discussion about their impact on research. Our workshop offers a space for HCI researchers to reflect on their well-being, share personal experiences, and examine how personal struggles intersect with their research practices. Together, we will foreground researchers’ well-being as an essential concern and explore how these lived realities can be meaningfully integrated into our methodologies. In doing so, we invite the HCI community to not only centre the human in our research, but also recognise the researcher as human; one whose life is deeply entangled with the work they do.