Immersive scholarship: Inhabiting and crafting storied lifeworlds through ethnographic research retreats

Abstract

Retreats are frequently examined as an ethnographic field to investigate a range of phenomena that occurs while on retreat. This process involves the researcher/s entering the lifeworlds of the retreat. Through immersion in lifeworlds, ethnographers derive insights into the how, what and why within retreat settings. However, designing and facilitating retreats as a method of ethnographic inquiry does more than this. There is not only immersion in lifeworlds but an active co-creation of them. This article presents a case study of a retreat designed for the primary purpose of conducting ethnographic research. The retreat brought together five self-identifying women to explore their storied experiences of belonging. This article shows how the retreat not only provided the setting but dynamically shaped the research. We argue that research retreats are an inclusive way of conducting ethnographic research that attunes and attends to relationally embodied collective meaning-making processes involved in crafting lifeworlds.

Introduction

We acknowledge, that wherever we are, we are on sacred Country. We pay respect to the First Nations peoples and Traditional Custodians of these places, honouring their Elders, past and present, their lands and living cultures, and the stories they carry. We acknowledge and pay respect to Country itself, as understanding the sentience, agency and vitality of Country is central to our collective retreat-based research. We pay respect to Darkinjung Country, where our retreat took place, as well as Awabakal, Gundungurra, Wilyakali, Worimi, Wurundjeri and Yuin Country where aspects of this article were thought up, storied and written.

In January 2020, we participated in a retreat-based doctoral research project on Darkinjung Country (Umina NSW). The project was undertaken as part of Fee’s doctoral research with The University of Sydney and was subject to and compliant with human ethics approval. Fee was the researcher, retreat designer and facilitator, and research participant. Jodie was the group support person and research participant, and Sara, Naomi and Debbi were research participants. This article presents a case study of our experiences of designing and facilitating (from Fee’s perspective) and participating in a dedicated ethnographic research retreat, where the primary purpose of the retreat was to participate in and conduct research. ¹

Our case study highlights that research retreats are an underutilized ethnographic methodology that democratizes the research process by actively centring the co-creation of data through immersion in lifeworlds. We draw from our retreat experiences to demonstrate the benefits and challenges of research retreats as an innovative and novel ethnographic methodology. We examine current ethnographic literature on retreats, noting a distinct lack of research on retreats where the primary purpose of the retreat is to facilitate the research and consider the explicit and implicit associations that shape events labelled as retreats. These discussions frame our case study as we introduce the research group and outline the goals, design and implementation of our research retreat. Furthermore, the case study details our experiences of sensing and serving the subjunctive mood of the research retreat (Plancke, 2020), the role self-directed and emergent explorations played (Kelly, 2012), and how inhabiting the lifeworlds of the retreat cultivated an enduring sense of community (Glouberman and Cloutier, 2017). The closing section offers critical reflections to acknowledge the blurriness, complexities and challenges of research retreats. We argue that research retreats are an important ethnographic methodology that recognizes the value and influence of self-determined and emplaced knowledges (produced via relationally embodied meaning-making processes), which are nurtured by this immersive form of scholarship.

Situating research retreats as an ethnographic methodology

Throughout this article, we differentiate between the terms ‘retreats’ and ‘research retreats’. The former is deployed broadly, while the latter is used to emphasize that the retreat has been designed (by the researcher/s) for the primary purpose of conducting and participating in research. Retreats are frequently examined as an ethnographic field to investigate a range of phenomena. This type of ethnographic investigation requires researchers to enter the lifeworlds of the retreat (Jackson, 2013; Mourtazina, 2020). Through immersion in these lifeworlds, ethnographers derive insights and understandings into the how, what and why of things. Generally speaking, there is a taken-for-granted-ness about the retreat structure and setting, whereby it is not recognized as an active agent in shaping and creating the lifeworlds of retreat participants (see Bozalek, 2017; Murray and Newton, 2009; Norman and Pokorny, 2017; Orozco and Harris, 2022; Schutte and Dreyer, 2006). Thus, the phenomena researched is set apart from the context from which it emerges.

There are exceptions to this disembodied (or dis-emplaced) research approach, which recognize the significance of retreat settings as active, shaping entities (see Eddy, 2015; Pascal, 2010; Plancke, 2019, 2020; Sharrock, 2018). For example, Glenys Eddy (2015) undertook ethnographic fieldwork with a meditation centre in the Australian Blue Mountains from 2003 to 2005. Her research involved attending a series of meditation retreats to better understand the processes through which participants internalized Buddhist ideologies and practices. She observed that the “retreat-style activity facilitated the participant’s socialization into the Theravadin Buddhist worldview” and provided “an interpretive framework for lived experience” (Eddy, 2015: 70). Eddy’s (2015) recognition of the shaping influence of the ‘retreat-style activities’ helps us to appreciate that a vital part of the ethnographer’s role is to make sense of these types of worldviews and interpretative frames by stepping into the lifeworlds of the retreat.

Understanding research retreats as a deliberate method of ethnographic inquiry requires more than occupying lifeworlds. Noting the phenomenological origins of Husserl’s (1984) notion of lifeworlds, we wish to emphasize that such worlds are neither static nor fixed (cf. Jackson, 2013; Mourtazina, 2020). We mobilize the idea of lifeworlds in retreat contexts to emphasize the “ordinary in-betweens—unremarked, mundane experiences that are imbued with sensoriality” (Mourtazina, 2020: 350; cf. Ehn and Löfgren, 2010; Jackson, 2013; Stoller, 2009). Doing so draws attention to the “often-unnoticed scapes of sounds and silences [of retreats] to show that these are not merely background” (Mourtazina, 2020: 350). Rather, these sensorial experiences actively shape and influence the research by fleshing out the material lifeworlds of the retreat.

We, therefore, contend that research retreats not only immerse us in ethnographic lifeworlds but dynamically co-create them. Carine Plancke’s (2019, 2020) connection between the delineation of time and space and the occupation of liminalities helps illustrate this point. Her ethnographic research on women’s tantric retreats in Northwest Europe reveals that these retreats:

…not only included practices which were explicitly framed as rituals, but the workshop [retreat] as a whole became ritualized by the demarcation of a time-space outside of daily life which was regarded as particularly inductive for change and novel experiences (Plancke, 2020: 287).

Linking ritualized processes beyond daily life with Victor Turner’s (1982) concept of liminality (cf. Van Gennep, 2001), Plancke (2020) argues that understanding liminality, as necessary for cultivating a ‘subjunctive mood’, enables new possibilities to emerge. The retreat fosters a subjunctive mood whereby wishes, hopes, imaginings and dreams are lived out in the liminal space of the retreat (Plancke, 2020: 287). This sense of liminality comes from being in and of social worlds and yet set apart from the everydayness of broader social routines and contexts.

The process of inhabiting liminal spaces encourages retreat participants to dwell in realms of possibility that might otherwise remain beyond the scope of the research. This encouragement comes not just from retreat facilitator/s but from the idea of being on retreat itself. In this sense, the retreat dynamically co-creates lifeworlds that are at once contained and expansive; contained in the sense that there is a bracketing off from the ‘real’ world, and expansive in that realms of possibility (insights, understandings, ways of being, doing, valuing and knowing) emerge precisely because of the bracketing and retreat from the routines of our regular daily lives. Significantly, the retreat also becomes a subjunctive container—a research vessel—filled with the ideas, perspectives and hopes researchers and participants bring to the retreat lifeworld.

Grounding this idea, Hortense Powdermaker frames the role of ethnographers as “stepping in and out of society” (1966: 5). While Powdermaker (1966) uses this notion to highlight the need for situated forms of researcher reflexivity while doing ethnography, the description also exemplifies the boundedness of such movements for researchers and participants attending ethnographic research retreats. In this context, the process of stepping ‘out of society’, even briefly, enables the occupation of ‘other realms’. The immersive experience of being on retreat is, at least in part, created through the retreat from everyday life. This, in turn, creates time and space to explore complex and emergent intraconnections with and between individuals, co-participants, ideas, communities, Earth-kin, place and matter. ²

What it is to be on and in retreat

To better understand research retreats as an immersive fieldwork methodology, we consider how retreats, more broadly, are experienced and conceived. Catherine Kelly (2012), specializing in the growing field of retreat tourism, observes that retreats and notions of ‘being on retreat’ are commonly associated with contextualized forms of deep self-reflection. She argues that tourism retreats:

…provoke their visitors to reflect upon themselves, before and after… to contextualize who they are, often, in relation to where they are in their lives and where they would like to be. [Retreat participants] ask questions of themselves that do not usually arise in mass tourism contexts (Kelly, 2012: 208).

This type of self-reflection is closely aligned with a desire for self-development, which Kelly further explores with her colleague Melanie Smith (2017: 138). They identify a yearning for self-development as a further motivation for participation in retreats (Kelly and Smith, 2017: 138). Self-development in this context is often packaged as providing opportunities for the honing and development of skills, knowledge and practices that serve as self-improvement. By presenting retreats as a vehicle for ‘self-development’, an educative agenda is implicitly communicated. There is a sense that if one goes on retreat, that they will learn something.

A further distinguishing feature of retreats (as opposed to other types of educative experiences) is that they can also satisfy a desire to be part of a community. Dina Glouberman and Josée-Ann Cloutier’s (2017) retreat-based tourism research identifies that the desire for belonging and the need to experience a sense of community are symptoms of living increasingly disconnected digitalized lives. They observe that retreats:

…provide opportunities to replenish people’s lives that may be neglected due to social forces and challenges such as the increase of speed and technology and the decrease in community support which together result in heightened disconnection and stress… [T]here is a growing longing and search for community and belonging which community-oriented holidays and retreats can address (Glouberman and Cloutier, 2017: 153).

Conjuring the subjunctive mood, there is an underlying expectation or hope that while on retreat, we will meet like-minded people and that this cultivates a sense of connectedness and belonging. Glouberman and Cloutier’s (2017) research shows that shared points of connection (whether real or imagined) help create a sense of community for retreat participants, which is deeply valued and highly desired.

In sum, ‘retreats’ are associated with time spent in deep introspection reflecting on micro (the self) and macro (the world/multiverse) positionalities, honing or acquiring skills and knowledge, cultivating stimulating experiences, and nurturing a sense of community. It, therefore, makes sense that people come to a retreat with an implicit hope that the experience of being on retreat will enhance their personal and collective understandings and wellbeing. To demonstrate how this plays out in practice, we now present our research retreat as a case study to highlight the benefits and acknowledge the challenges of this type of ethnographic research.

Case study: inhabiting the storied lifeworlds of an ethnographic research retreat

Having established that research retreats are intentional settings for cultivating connection, developing understandings, and nurturing wellbeing, we show how our research retreat enabled us to work with ideas and processes that were personally meaningful, and how the unique qualities of being on retreat created the time and space to explore emergent insights into the research topic. Fee’s professional background as a workshop and retreat facilitator influenced her decision to design a doctoral research project that deployed a four-day research retreat as her primary methodology (Mozeley, 2022). By labelling the research a ‘retreat’ rather than a ‘residential workshop’, the underlying methodological and pedagogical intentions of the research were communicated.

Notions about retreats, such as those discussed previously, were intentionally (and at times unintentionally) evoked through the design and implementation phases. We begin our case study by introducing ourselves, providing an overview of the research aims and retreat objectives and describing what took place and why. To help bring our case study to life, we draw on self-descriptions, quotes from the retreat, and a post-retreat conference call, during which we reflected on our experiences of being on retreat.

Introducing the research group

Fee is a 44-year-old fifth-generation Australian with Scottish, Irish, English and Nordic heritage. ³ She is a tree-loving, storytelling, ethnographer who lives on Awabakal Country. Fee occupied the roles of researcher, retreat designer, group facilitator and research participant. Jodie is a 43-year-old white-Australian community activist, seafarer and experienced trauma-informed health worker who lives on Worimi Country. She was a participant and the group support person. Sara is a 33-year-old autistic Walbanja-Yuin woman born on Burramattagal Country and grown up on unceded Dharug and Gundungurra lands. Sara is an artist, poet, geographer and story-maker who experiences the world in neurologically diverse ways. Naomi is a 42-year-old fifth-generation Australian woman. She is a transpersonal therapist, artist and educator who lives on Wilyakali Country. And Debbi is a 58-year-old new-agey, lefty, greenie, save-the-gay-whales brand of intersectional feminist activist and anthropologist. Debbi has Anglo (European) and Aboriginal heritages and lives on Wurundjeri Country and Yuin Country.

Fee created our research group from her existing networks. The research participation inclusion criteria required that we self-identify as women, reside in Australia, and make sense of our worlds through stories, personally and professionally. This meant that we considered stories a valuable mode of engagement and that we worked explicitly with storied practices in our daily lives. In addition, to acknowledge socio-cultural and political impacts on belonging, we also self-identify as intersectional feminists and/or womanists. This ensured some level of shared understanding of Australia’s patriarchal and colonial contexts. The inclusion criteria helped conjure the subjunctive mood of the research retreat by implicitly communicating that we would be on retreat with like-minded people without seeking to homogenize the group (Glouberman and Cloutier, 2017).

As such, in addition to establishing common ground, group diversity was also needed to avoid producing research that speaks only to middle-class cis-white women. Attending to group diversity served as a way to recognize the multiple lifeworlds we occupy through compounding and intersecting identities and subjectivities (see Crenshaw, 2019). Our intended group included two additional participants who, unfortunately, were unable to attend. Dawn is a 44-year-old single mother of two boys. She identifies as a Murri woman who also has Scottish, Irish, Indian and Chinese ancestry. Dawn was unable to attend due to career and carer responsibilities. Pearl identifies as a bi-racial, multicultural, lesbian, ecofeminist woman in her fifties. Pearl was unable to attend as she needed to protect her property from the Australian ‘Black Summer’ bushfires. ⁴ The research group consisted of women from diverse cultural backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ women, and women from a range of classes (though predominately working and middle class). The ages of participants, at the time of the retreat spanned 25 years, ranging from the early thirties to late fifties.

Research aims and research retreat objectives

The aims of the research were:

1. To better understand how storying and restorying shapes women’s embodied, relational and emplaced sense of belonging via an experiential research retreat; and

2. To ‘play’ with what it means to restory lived experiences.

Processes of ‘storying’ provided the conceptual and methodological remit of the research and were used to refer to the multiple ways we make sense through and with stories (focusing on personal narratives, societal narratives and grand cultural narratives, which we referred to as myth-based stories generally, and, cultural stories when referring to First Nations stories). The overarching research aims informed the specific research retreat objectives:

1. To create and maintain a sharing environment characterized by trust, openness, honesty, contemplation, self-critique, mutual respect and support;

2. To offer opportunities to engage in storywork and develop story practices; and,

3. To provide a forum for creative engagement with women’s experiences of longing and belonging.

Notably, ideas about what it means to be on retreat were embedded in the objectives. For example, the first objective facilitated self-reflection and self-determined sharings and learnings (Kelly, 2012). The second objective provided opportunities to hone and develop knowledge and practices (Kelly and Smith, 2017). And the third objective helped to create a sense of community and belonging within the group (Glouberman and Cloutier, 2017).

In the opening session, we each shared why we wanted to participate, what we were hoping to get out of the research retreat, and how we were feeling at that moment. We talked about our previous experiences of being on retreat and our understandings of what a retreat is and can be. Our experiences and ideas closely reflected the findings of Kelly (2012) and Kelly and Smith (2017), who argue that retreats often invoke associations with time spent honing skills or acquiring knowledge with overarching aims of enhancing wellbeing and a sense of community (see also Glouberman and Cloutier, 2017). Fee explained that this research retreat was somewhat unusual as its primary purpose centred on the co-creation of storied research. Notwithstanding, she explained that the storywork processes were designed to foster opportunities for self-determined learning and reflection so that our personal storying journeys could unfold alongside the research journey. Fee also re-emphasized that no one was expected to be an expert or to speak on behalf of others.

Navigating the complexities of pre-existing relationships and honouring the importance of self-representation and self-disclosure, Fee also extended an invitation to participants to share anything that felt important to mention upfront. This invitation created space for Sara to share a little about her neurodiversity, how it might affect her during the research retreat, and for her to articulate some of her needs. It also allowed Jodie to talk about how her levels of participation might fluctuate as she was still adjusting to the idea of occupying a dual role as the group support person and participant.

Sensing and serving the subjunctive mood

Research retreats are unique; they are part of a constructed social world and yet set apart from the everydayness of broader social contexts. Carine Plancke’s (2020) connection between this delineation of time-space and the occupation of liminalities was lived out on our research retreat. The liminal space of the research retreat facilitated new possibilities, emergent insights and a sense of ‘hope-filled’ anticipation (Turner, 1982: 83). Having defined the participation criteria, Fee mapped various group configurations drawing from her existing networks. She identified potential participants, sent email invitations, waited for responses and adjusted based on confirmations and declines until seven places were filled. The likelihood that participants could know each other and share professional and social connections was communicated in the initial correspondence, participant information statement and consent forms. Upon confirming our participation, permission was sought to share our involvement with other potential participants. We all agreed to this, which allowed greater transparency, enabling everyone to know who would be attending the research retreat. This knowledge created a sense of joyful anticipation for Debbi:

It was an amazing gift for me knowing that I was going to be in a women’s space again. For more than a decade, my spaces have been very male. I have a male child; I was in a share house with my brother-in-law and nephews. I then moved to Melbourne with two male teens, and now I’m living with my male partner and his male child. I haven’t shared a house with a female since my sister was living with me, which was over 12 years ago. I really miss homosocial spaces. When I did fieldwork in Turkey, village life was very sex-segregated, and before I went into the village, I thought about this quite critically; you know, that this is another way women are oppressed. But I was wrong; it was wonderful. Spending 6 months in spaces where I was predominantly with other women was such a gift. And so, part of the lead-up to our retreat was filled with excitement that I was going to go and hang out in a female space again.

Feelings of excitement were echoed by others in the group. However, Naomi acknowledged a mix of feelings as she reflected on how knowing most of the participants was both comforting and a source of anxiety:

I admit that I was a little bit nervous coming into the retreat. I feel pretty socially inept these days; I hardly see anybody. So while I knew almost everyone in the group, there were the usual feelings of vulnerability coming up for me. But mostly I was curious, and I loved what Fee presented about what we were going to be doing together. I was really keen to explore that, and I was super keen for a retreat. I was excited to go into this beautiful space and talk about these wondrous things with good people and the world could just stop for a while.

Naomi’s final comment leans into the liminality of being on retreat. Part of her hoped-filled anticipation of going on retreat was located in being invited into ‘another space’ and leaving broader social worlds ‘outside’. Jodie also navigated a range of subjunctive feelings as her role as group support person shifted to include also being a research participant:

I went into the retreat a little bit differently because I was meant to be working as the group support person, and I only had a couple of days to adjust to the idea of being a participant as well. I was quite nervous in the lead-up. I was worried about how much I’d be able to contribute. I knew that Debbi and Naomi are amazing and I had heard all these great things about Sara. I worried I was going to be shy. But I felt more comfortable when I picked up Naomi. We started talking straight away, and I relaxed into the experience on the car ride to the retreat.

Jodie’s comments demonstrate that the subjunctive mood of a research retreat is complex, dynamic and actively negotiated. Her hopes shifted and adjusted to reflect her anticipated and actual comfort levels. Sara similarly felt mixed emotions coming into the research retreat:

The biggest thing that stands out to me in the lead-up to the retreat was the combination of feeling overwhelming excitement and overwhelming anxiety because you all knew each other, and I was the newbie coming in. I came into the retreat feeling insecure as a woman, not just as a woman but as an autistic woman and as an Aboriginal woman, and I was younger than everyone else. So I was a little bit anxious. But also, because I knew Fee, I was sure it was going to be great. It was a seesaw of feelings and emotions.

Fee spoke with Sara prior to the retreat to identify specific needs to help mediate these anxieties. Fee was able to ensure that Sara had their own bedroom, that their favourite tea would be available, and that they would have the opportunity to share with the group how their neurodiversity might impact them at the start of the research retreat. Sara further reflected:

I’d read everything that [Fee] sent, which meant I knew what to expect, but I also didn’t know what to expect. It felt like this mysterious mystery adventure where you sort of have a map, but you don’t really know what you’re going to encounter along the way. The map can only tell you so much. I distinctly remember driving up the coast thinking, ‘Right, this is it, I’m going to get something here. This is going to be a big turning point. It’s going to be good’. There was this immediate sense that there’s going to be something healing in this, like I’m going to hang out with sisters.

Sara’s comment about knowing but not knowing further captures the liminality of being on retreat. Moreover, her recollection about anticipating ‘good’ things illustrates how the very idea of being on retreat began to shape her lived experience even before the research retreat began. In the closing session of the research retreat, Sara shared:

I really valued being welcomed into a circle of people who already knew each other, as the new person and also realizing that I’m a bit younger than everyone else. Normally, that’s not how my group configurations go. It’s been really nice to bask in women elders… I feel like it’s okay to be in my 30s and that the age difference has actually been great.

Collectively, these reflections illustrate the range of anticipatory emotions and complex personal negotiations undertaken by participants. Attending and attuning to the subjunctive mood emphasizes the ways in which our embodied experiences and associations of what it means to be on retreat shaped our expectations and hopes leading into the research retreat. Moreover, the subjunctive mood was relationally constructed. Knowing who we would be on retreat with allowed for greater transparency and for participants to balance inherent uncertainties with a sense that they would be nurtured and cared for throughout the research process.

Self-directed and emergent explorations

The research retreat provided a physical environment for our storywork and a conceptual and methodological framework for our ethnographic storied engagement. Researching in a retreat setting entangles pedagogies and methodologies. It requires situating the research as multidirectional and co-created rather than extractive (see Butterwick and Selman, 2003; Lykes and Hershberg, 2012; Manicom and Walters, 2013). Given the ethical imperative to create research that gives back to participants in meaningful ways, data or knowledge is not simply gathered or collected. Instead, it is co-created. Feminist popular education brings these pedagogical and methodological considerations together by prioritizing relationally embodied processes for collective meaning-making and intentionally co-creating research data in ways that democratize the research process (see Amsler, 2014; Motta, 2011).

Building on this pedagogical and methodological foundation, the research retreat was designed to ensure creativity (by drawing on a range of learning/sharing styles and storied activities); flexibility (by being perceptive of, and responsive to, group wants, needs and dynamics); trust, in the group, in the processes and in the research (by ensuring transparency in decision making and meaning-making processes); and that power was actively addressed (by minimizing and decentring the researcher as the expert voice and positioning participants as important co-creators and knowledge holders). Furthermore, these design elements were shaped by Louise Phillips and Tracy Bunda’s (2018: 43) five principles of storying, which are:

1. Storying nourishes thought, body and soul,

2. Storying claims voice in the silenced margins,

3. Storying is embodied relational meaning-making,

4. Storying intersects the past and present as living oral archives, and

5. Storying enacts collective ownership and authorship.

Accordingly, a range of methods were drawn on. The retreat setting altered the tenor of the research methods and invited the inclusion of less traditional research methods such as story rituals, bodywork exercises and creative art-based storying practices. Each method was designed to focus the research topic but also to enable emergent, self-determined explorations. We noticed that remaining open to the emergent needs time. Traditional methods of interviewing and focus groups are often constrained by the need to keep participants on track due to limited time frames. Conversely, our multiday retreat created a sense of spaciousness; there was time (in sessions and out) and flexibility to explore emergent interests and ideas. Following these more emergent trails led to insights and understandings that may have otherwise remained beyond reach. The gift of time and space to contemplate, play and explore helped to co-create rich data and situated knowledges.

For instance, individual journaling was undertaken each morning for 40 minutes. While Fee provided a series of question prompts as a starting point; we were encouraged to share reflections of our choosing (see Dwyer et al., 2013; cf. Tsevreni, 2021). Our focus-group type discussions (Sessions 2 and 4) integrated storytelling rituals and creative processing practices (see Hennink, 2014; cf. Van Bezouw et al., 2019). For Session 2, we were asked to choose a myth-based or cultural story (with permissions) that spoke to our subjective experiences of longing and belonging. We took turns sharing our stories and used visual mapping exercises, tarot card images as discussion prompts, and sensory engagement approaches to process and reflect on each story. For Session 4, we were asked to bring three self-selected objects as story prompts. These objects co-told our personal stories of self-belonging, relational belonging and emplaced belonging (see Mozeley et al., 2023).

The democratic activation of popular education pedagogies calls for acknowledging and drawing on participants’ strengths to destabilize traditional power relations between educators/researchers and participants (see Amsler, 2014; Glowacki-Dudka et al., 2017; Motta, 2011). As such, our arts-based sessions (Session 3) were led by Naomi, who guided us in play-based experimentation as our unofficial artist-in-residence. The sessions provided guidance on how to use the different mediums (charcoals, pastels and watercolours) and an explanation of the proposed tasks, which served as an extension of our storywork from Session 2. Again, modelling practices of self-determination, if we felt called to do something else in these sessions, we were encouraged to do so. Collectively, these sessions (and the methods used within them) formed part of a heuristic process designed to explore the research topic—belonging—as it “relates people with their social and material worlds in dynamic and multiple ways” (Wright, 2015: 395). Reflecting on the benefits of this, Jodie commented that:

Part of what made the retreat so nurturing, was the balance of activities and that there was time to spend on my own to process what we’d done in session. It wasn’t just the story sessions with cameras recording, I was learning through the yoga, art, and eating, by laughing and living together. I really appreciated the sharing that happened in between the formal storytelling sessions. Those informal interactions and connections were just as valuable. I found myself going deeper, making connections, remembering and sharing further context to things I’d said and thought about in the actual sessions. The retreat gave me time and space to feel into my stories in a way that you just don’t get at a 3-hour workshop or in a one-off interview.

Creating research retreat processes and methods that enabled self-determined forms of self-reflection and self-development was critical. Consequently, it was vital to ensure that the research could be made personally meaningful for participants and that the research processes were generative and nurturing (Phillips and Bunda, 2018: 75). Sara reflected on this aspect of the research retreat:

The retreat gave me the opportunity to sit with and go back to some of my roots. By talking about my grandparents and talking about my journey of finding my First Nations grandparents, it gave me that sense of ‘this is the stuff that was me before anyone else came into my life and before anything else happened’. It was wonderful to reconnect with that part of myself and to strengthen, empower and use that as a stepping stone to a better space. If I look at where I am now, compared to when we did the retreat, I’m a hundred times stronger. A lot of that strength comes from my strength as a woman. For whatever other identities I have that’s the one I keep coming back to. Most of the mob that I work with now are women, and for the first time in my life, I have more women around me than men. And I don’t think that’s an accident. While I didn’t go out and intentionally plan for that, the seed was planted at the retreat. The retreat reminded me I need to be around other women. I need to be around Sisters and Aunties. I need to be around Grandmothers; and that’s what has happened.

Sara’s comments about strength and empowerment reinforce that the research retreat provided opportunities for nurturing self-development, and her experience of sitting with and going back to her roots illustrates vital forms of self-reflection. Having time and space to contemplate, connect and create enabled Sara to craft personally meaningful research experiences that benefitted her beyond the scope of the research retreat. Moreover, she captures the sense of community she experienced and how she was able to take that into other parts of her life post-retreat.

Cultivating community

An important consideration for all ethnographic research involves determining the research group. This is especially true for retreat-based research. Part of constructing the lifeworlds of a research retreat involves identifying what unites the group and the points of departure (via inclusion and exclusion criteria), as well as meticulously considering how such connections and differences will be respected and honoured. When conducting ethnographic research on someone else’s retreat, the researcher usually is not responsible for these decisions. Of course, there is still the choice of which retreats and which cohorts to work with; however, the level of responsibility and the intentionality is different when creating a retreat group for the primary purpose of undertaking ethnographic research.

As noted, Fee drew on existing networks to establish the research group. The benefits of researching with known cohorts are recognized by qualitative research methodologists. Michelle McGinn (2008), for instance, argues that pre-existing relationships among research participants and researchers can add complexity, depth and richness. She notes that relationships between qualitative researchers and participants fall on a spectrum ranging from “distant, detached and impersonal through to close, collaborative and friendly” and that increasingly “qualitative research tends to promote closer relationships rather than distanced relationships” (McGinn, 2008: 268 and 772 respectively). In a retreat setting, these closer relationships contribute to the cultivation of a sense of community. Indeed, if we were to apply McGinn’s (2008) spectrum, our research group would fall on the farthest end at friendly and could be further categorized as loving, defined as holding great care, respect and spiritual reverence for each other. ⁵

We are not suggesting that all research retreats should adopt a networked recruitment approach, rather, we acknowledge that this had a significant (and positive) impact for our research group. Naomi reflected on the depth of sharing and learning that took place on our retreat, noting that this was, at least in part, enabled by our pre-existing trust and rapport and that the research retreat further solidified our bonds as a group:

I remember being impressed by how powerful the sharing of our stories was; there were so many layers; layers of experiences and different levels of meaning that each of us accessed. I was impressed by how much our sharing wove such an intense sense of belonging and connection in that small time. And it really struck me that, yes, of course, this is how we weave community, it’s through the sharing. We have woven something, like a new cloth of belonging. It was such an affirming space, and this has lasted for me.

The ongoing sense of community cultivated through inhabiting the lifeworlds of the research retreat continues to show up in a range of ways, including co-authoring this and other articles together (see Mozeley et al., 2023; Mozeley et al., 2025). A further example is demonstrated by how we continue to look to each other for validation and support. Debbi reflected on this:

I have messenger on my phone and whenever a message notification from ‘Restorying Women’ pops up, I feel lighter. Every time I see that, it’s like a breath of warm air, you know that beautiful spring air that smells good and feels good. It’s like when Naomi said how there’s that thing of being able to hold each other now. If I really need to feel understood, our ‘Restorying Group’ is the place I’d go to. It’s a really supportive space for me. There’s an enormous amount of trust between us. And it’s because we have our own language, which doesn’t always need words. It’s a space of belonging that has a particular shared mode of communication and shared trust. For me, that’s really unique, and very special.

The unique modes of communication described by Debbi above provides a glimpse into the lifeworlds co-created by being on the research retreat together. Being on retreat enabled us to move beyond our ‘presented’ selves to be together as ‘lived’ selves. ⁶ Importantly, encountering each other as ‘lived’ selves produced a particular kind of intimacy. It was not only through the sharing of personal stories of longing and belonging but also the sharing of space in familial ways that promoted connection and belonging which nurtured our collective wellbeing and strengthened our relationships. Reflecting on these intimate familial aspects of being on retreat, Debbi commented:

It’s interesting, particularly in a house situation like we were in; it’s like a family situation and I know for some people, family isn’t safe. But there’s a sense of familiarity that comes from the word family and an intimacy. There’s a whole lot of stuff that gets broken down when you’re with a group of people 24/7, even if it’s only for a few days because it’s taking place in spaces that we usually code as intimate. And so even if you don’t feel particularly intimate with the people you’re with, you’re in this intimate space. And so, in terms of, integrated lived-in retreats—residential retreats—as opposed to the come and go type workshop/retreats, that intimacy is so important. Part of it is not breaking the energy [by stepping in and stepping out], but also by being ‘family-like’ for that bracketed amount of time. It creates something quite precious.

As noted, it is not simply being in place and bracketing off time that creates a sense of containment. Our shared storied/feminist/womanist vision filled the subjunctive retreat space with ideas, perspectives, hopes and longings and created a sense of intimacy in the retreat lifeworld. Here, the act of being on retreat has a palpable agency. That is to say, the research retreat setting actively encouraged us to inhabit storied lifeworlds. Honouring the first principle of storying, that storying nurtures thought, body and spirit (Phillips and Bunda, 2018: 43), the research retreat environment also needs to be nurturing (Lengen, 2015).

While the research retreat venue needed to have practical things like enough beds for everyone and adequate workshop space, Fee also sought elements that would enhance the nurturing experiences of being on and in retreat. She rented an architecturally and sustainably designed house that was quirky, spacious and comfortable. The property hosted a large tropical forest-like garden. A creek flowed past the back gate and across the little log footbridge was a sports oval. Then, there was the beach—a cove with stunning offshore islands. The house had multiple comfortable lounging areas and two large welcoming dining tables for sharing meals, one inside and one on the deck. Hammocks were strung between trees, and there was a plunge pool. Despite being in an urban suburb (which was necessary due to the bushfires at the time), there was no visual sense of being near other humans. The mature garden and large trees blocked out neighbouring houses, and the forested area at the back provided a secluded and striking outlook. Fee transformed the lounge area next to the kitchen into our storywork space, as it hosted a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the lush garden. Lounges were repositioned, cushions and beanbags were brought in, a circular woven rug was placed in the centre to symbolize our story circle, and daily agendas and retreat objectives were hung on the walls.

Living together helped foster a sense of intimacy and connectedness. The setting enabled stories to permeate the retreat space. We recalled stories and created new ones while sharing meals, living spaces, bathrooms (with doors that didn’t close fully) and bodily functions (including burps, coughs, sneezes and flatulence). We shared and crafted stories while on afternoon walks and having ocean swims, hammock swings and dips in the plunge pool. These lived experiences of being on retreat generated stories that created intimacy and subsequently produced a profound and enduring sense of community. The research retreat transformed us from a group of women who knew and cared about each other into deeply bonded ‘Story Sisters’.

Critical reflections

At this point, we must acknowledge key challenges we encountered when researching via a retreat. The first challenge was identified before the research retreat began. Research retreats take place on Country. In our Australian context, it is important that this is appropriately acknowledged. To this end, Fee contacted the local Aboriginal Land Council to connect with Traditional Custodians to ask if they would join the research retreat on the first day to help us pay respect to the peoples, stories and Country we were researching on and with. She was given five potential contacts, two of whom were women. Fee called both women without success. As the research was originally to be held on Darug Country in a rural setting, Fee reached out to Sara for help as she had connections with Traditional Custodians in the area. With Sara’s help, a respected Darug Aunty was willing and able to collaborate with us. However, in the lead-up to the research retreat, the Black Summer fires intensified on her Country, and her time and focus were needed there. At this time, it became clear that we needed to change the venue to a safer urban environment due to the fires. A new venue was found on Darkinjung Country. Unfortunately, the restrictive circumstances of the Christmas/New Year period meant that there was not enough time to restart the process of connecting with Darkinjung Traditional Custodians. Fee attempted to mediate this by acknowledging and paying respect to Country and its Traditional Custodians through a grounding exercise upon our arrival at the research retreat. Nonetheless, she acknowledges that this was, at best, a partial remedy, and that this aspect of conducting research retreats on Country requires ongoing attention and active engagement.

We are also aware that research retreats require a considerable time commitment from participants, which can be prohibitive. If not actively addressed, issues of power and privilege can play out in the recruitment phase (and elsewhere). Fee was mindful of this and sought to reduce the financial impacts through lost income from missing work by scheduling the retreat over a weekend. While this went some way toward mitigating pecuniary losses, we acknowledge it was a partial solution. Fee covered all costs for the research retreat; accommodation, food, travel and workshop resources, including art packs, books and journals, were provided.

It was also important to offer options for carers, as well as understanding, anticipating and managing the physical, emotional and mental health needs of participants. Fee ensured that the venue was pet friendly as one of the intended participants had indicated that finding someone to care for her dog would be challenging. Childcare was offered but not needed for this group of participants. The carer responsibilities that prevented Dawn from attending were for her elderly mother. Communication practices were used to help understand, anticipate and manage the physical, emotional and mental health needs of participants. Morning check-ins created an opportunity for participants to share how they were feeling and communicate any needs for the day. This daily practice built on the ‘group agreement’ that we established in the opening session of the research retreat, which Sara summarized as ‘circles of care’ (circle of care around self, circle around each other, circle of Country around us, and a circle of ‘Invisible Unknown All’). We agreed that we would ‘speak our needs’ and if we were struggling to do so in the group that we could use non-verbal cues to indicate that individual support was needed.

Fee shared that her experience as a group work facilitator taught her that she could not promise a safe space as it is impossible to know what might bring up strong emotions; however, she could provide a supported space, where personal and group boundaries would be respected. Having a group support person was important to provide a point of contact for participants to speak with if issues arose that they might not feel comfortable raising with the researcher directly. In this role, Jodie also supported Fee and was available throughout the retreat to reflect on processes and debrief after sessions. Jodie’s observations of the group were invaluable. For example, Fee had planned a closing activity for the first night that involved washing the day away with a water ritual. Jodie encouraged Fee to choose a different closing activity as a participant had shared a personal story over dinner about a recent loss and that the water ritual might elicit strong feelings. As this example demonstrates, Jodie’s support enabled Fee to be responsive and attentive to the group’s needs, dynamics and energies. The check-ins and debriefs between Fee and Jodie also provided one-to-one opportunities for Jodie to process their thoughts and feelings and communicate their needs.

When researching with known people, a foundation of trust already potentially exists to build upon, opening up research possibilities that might otherwise be closed (see McGinn, 2008). However, McConnell-Henry et al. (2010: 2-3) warn that without strategies in place to manage power imbalances between the researcher and participants, pre-existing rapport could result in participants agreeing to things beyond their comfort zones, over-disclosures, and trying to ‘help’ by telling the researcher what they think the researcher wants to hear. To manage these potential risks at our research retreat, Fee clarified our roles in the lead up to and during the retreat. The participant information statement outlined what was required and stressed that involvement was voluntary and that there would be no consequence for withholding participation. As a group, we talked through what voluntary participation might look like throughout the research retreat in our opening session. Before attending the research retreat, participants signed consent forms. This began the process of actively negotiating confidentiality and representation. The consent form outlined what data would and would not be used, along with processes of representation (identity, videos and photographs) and identified processes for providing feedback. Discussions around confidentiality and representation were revisited as needed throughout the research retreat. In addition, this active negotiation continued after the research retreat as drafts of thesis chapters were shared with participants for review, and journal articles were co-authored. Another strategy to manage power imbalances included communicating the explicit research agenda. The research and retreat objectives were shared with participants ahead of the research retreat, were displayed on the walls for the duration of the retreat and were discussed in the opening session.

Interventions were also needed to mitigate against over-disclosures. On our first evening together, Fee introduced the concept of an emotional hangover (Bloch, 1993). We talked about the vulnerabilities of sharing and how when we share beyond our current boundaries (noting that these can change moment-to-moment depending on context), feelings of unease and self-doubt can surface resulting in an emotional hangover. This became a practical way that we could manage our sharing and maintain our personal boundaries. For instance, after working with a story on Day 3, Sara felt profoundly impacted and requested a one-to-one conversation to process the story as she felt (in that moment) too vulnerable to share with the whole group stating that she “didn’t want to risk an emotional hangover”. Importantly, Fee was transparent about her use of strategies throughout the research retreat. Reflecting on her responsibilities leading into the retreat as the researcher, Fee shared:

I felt an enormous sense of responsibility because of my valued relationships with you all. The immensity of that responsibility was challenging. I wrestled with wanting to give the right amount of information so that you had enough knowledge to feel confident coming into the space but not overwhelm you with too much information. Ultimately, I wanted to create and hold a space that nurtured our relationships.

We share these critical reflections not as a deterrent but to bring to light the types of considerations and strategies needed to establish appropriate processes of cultural recognition, to meet the needs of the retreat group and to mitigate power imbalances. Such challenges are relevant beyond the scope of research retreats, and we hope this discussion also contributes to broader, ongoing ethnographic research conversations.

Concluding thoughts

Research retreats offer a unique setting for immersive scholarship, which can be used to intentionally and generatively democratize research processes. We have shown how the data generated through our retreat was thoroughly co-created. In addition, the research retreat facilitated research methods that enabled the research agenda to be made personally meaningful for each participant. This was critical for ensuring tangible self-determined benefits for participants. Presenting our research retreat as a case study highlights that time and space are needed to research emergent and self-determined ideas and interests. Critically, our emergent explorations often led to unanticipated insights and otherwise unidentified research possibilities. For example, researching on retreat emphasized the ways in which belonging is ontologically contingent, dynamic and co-constituted. It became clear, through inhabiting the lifeworlds of the retreat, how we position ourselves and others in the world shapes our experiences of belonging. Furthermore, our retreat-based storywork accentuated how belonging is experienced in socially, politically, contextualized and relational ways (see Mozeley 2022).

Furthermore, we have demonstrated that research retreats are a legitimate, meaningful, and inclusive way of designing and conducting qualitative research that attends to relationally embodied collective meaning-making processes. In addition, to address the dearth of ethnographic literature on what we define as research retreats, we have brought to light the significance and agency of retreat settings by providing critical insights into how and why research retreats need to be recognized as dynamic shaping entities in and of themselves. To build on this budding body of knowledge, we offer a final reflection by Fee, which captures the agency of our retreat:

The research retreat created something special that I didn’t anticipate. And if we didn’t connect the way that we did, we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing now. We wouldn’t be co-authoring together. Part of that was the lived-ness. We’ve all talked about it in different ways; that it wasn’t just about what happened in the sessions. It was about living together on retreat; that the retreat was such an unexpected, yet very welcomed gift.