“Wish You Were Here”? Postcard Mapping the Complexities of Doctoral Mentorship

Abstract

Context:

Doctoral students often navigate academic systems that prioritize hierarchy, productivity, and neoliberal ideals of individual excellence. These conditions can constrain a sense of belonging and silence the multidimensional identities students bring to their work. Because identity is continually shifting and shaped in relation to others, we explore how multimodal practices can surface the complex, affective, and embodied dimensions of becoming a scholar. We contend that critical mentorship can cultivate belonging by recognizing students’ strengths, supporting their contributions, and engaging them in relational guidance and shared sense-making. In this way, mentorship becomes a form of placemaking that transforms institutional spaces into meaningful communities where students can more fully become.

Purpose:

This paper examines how multimodal methods can open possibilities for (re)imagining doctoral mentorship as collaborative, relational, and humanizing. We investigate how these approaches foster critical belonging by affirming and valuing the lived experiences and knowledge students bring with them to the academy.

Research Design:

In this visual essay, we draw on ongoing narrative and arts-based research, engaging in postcard-making to map our mentorship experiences. The creation and sharing of postcards allowed us to reflect on artifacts, affects, and memories as we co-constructed meaning and (re)storied our experiences and identities as emerging scholars.

Conclusions:

Multimodal mentorship practices can disrupt traditional power relations by expanding who speaks, what counts as knowledge, and how scholarly identities formed and are expressed. By leaning into creative expression and reciprocity, academic spaces can shift from abstract and isolating to relational places where students feel recognized and valued. We argue that cultivating such belonging through critical mentorship creates a form of place-making essential to developing and sustaining doctoral students’ sense of belonging.