‘Critical Friends’ in the Precarious World of Academia

Exploring Our Relational Journeying

Bibliographic Data

ID19225354
AuthorsGael Bateman (0000-0002-4343-3768, British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy), Mark Price (0000-0001-9512-1902, St. Mary's University, Texas, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-05-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCulture Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1532-7086 • E-ISSN: 1552-356X
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/15327086261455271
OpenAlexW7162404616
LanguageEN
References cited10

Building from scattered encounters and exchanged artefacts (emails, WhatsApp messages, poems, and photos) collected across 4 years of relating to and with one another, we purposefully, and playfully explore our relational transformation from strangers, to ‘critical friends’, to trusted companions. By exploring how we changed one another’s worlds through a critical friendship that makes space for more-than-words, more-than-just-us-two, we invite others – particularly those involved in any constellation of mentoring or supervision – to take the risk towards vulnerability; towards being curious about what might be mutually found when we walk with and alongside one another in academic contexts, in camaraderie

Friendship · Interpersonal relationship · Participant observation · Photo elicitation · Reflexivity · Space (punctuation) · Doctoral Education Challenges and Solutions · Mentoring and Academic Development · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access