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I’m a first generation, previously low income, Christian, African American administrator at a California community college who struggled and felt alone throughout my journey. This autoethnography helped me make peace within my broken pieces. Within this dissertation, I highlight the impacts and hindrances within my education, family and career experiences. The purpose of this study is to offer the reader an insider view of how I ultimately became an administrator and with this information provide scholarship on how to more successfully integrate African American female leaders into higher education. The bonus chapter provides young women lessons learned along the way to shorten their learning curve on the way up the ladder.

The location-based social network (LBSN) Snapchat allows millions of users to share their locations to others through Snap Map: a digital map that updates their position each time they open the app. While social science studies have explored sentiments, behaviors and norms among Snap Map users, there is limited research on this type of location-based social network in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI), indicating a need for expanding the understanding of the roles that this technology and its design play in shaping the experiences and interactions among users. To address this need, this dialogical study applied a mixed-methods approach consisting of autoethnography and semi-structured interviews with two co-participants over the course of five weeks. The outcomes were analyzed using concepts from postphenomenology, introducing the main stabilities being seen and seeing others that were leveraged to nuance how Snap Map impacts e.g. communication, agency and what it means to act. The postphenomenological findings where then discussed from the lens of the spatial self to unpack how Snap Map mediates identity and performance. This combination of methods and lenses applied to a social media platform is a novel and fruitful approach in HCI, that led to discussions on how the design of Snap Map leads to concepts such as spatiotemporal ambiguity and the nexus of selves, shaping users’ relations to each other, themselves and their identity. / Miljontals användare på det platsbaserade sociala nätverket Snapchat delar sin plats med varandra via Snapkartan: en digital karta som automatiskt uppdaterar användarens position varje gång de öppnar appen. Studier inom samhällsvetenskapen har kartlagt känslor, beteenden och normer bland Snapkartans användare, men inom fältet människa-datainteraktion (MDI) finns det idag lite forskning tillägnad denna typ av teknologi, vilket indikerar ett behov av att utvidga förståelsen för de roller teknologin och dess design spelar i påverkan av dagliga upplevelser och interaktioner bland användarna. För att adressera detta använde denna dialogiska studie en blandad metod som bestod av autoetnografi och semi-strukturerade intervjuer med två deltagare under fem veckor. Resultaten analyserades med hjälp av begrepp från postfenomenologi, där de huvudsakliga stabiliteterna "att bli sedd" och "att se andra" introducerades och användes för att nyansera hur Snapkartan påverkar exempelvis kommunikation, agens och vad det innebär att agera. De postfenomenologiska resultaten diskuterades sedan utifrån perspektivet av den rumsmedvetna aspekten av ens identitet (the spatial self) för att bryta ned hur Snapkartan förmedlar identitet och performativa handlingar. Denna kombination av metoder och perspektiv som tillämpas på en social medieplattform är ett nytt och fruktbart tillvägagångssätt inom MDI, som ledde till en diskussion om hur Snapkartans design ger upphov till begrepp som rumslig och tidsmässig tvetydighet och sammankopplingen av flera självuppfattningar som formar användarnas relationer till varandra, sig själva och deras identitet.

This research is born from a conscious reflection on the roles and judgements that traditional scientific analyses imprint in its objects of study, especially in the field of social movement theory. It aims to understand whether and, to which extent, autonomous resistances knowledges constructed on the ground challenge the academic interpretations of those movements. For this reason, the first part of this dissertation focuses on unravelling how traditional ontologies have been built and underpin majoritarian scientific analyses. Thus, I review most current debates in the field. Traditional social movement research tends to focus on dualist discussions related to new and old social movements, European and American approaches, behavioural or cost-benefits views, structural and agency approaches, identity-based interpretations, etc. In opposition to that, I argue for an ontology breaking with dualist views, placing Deleuze’s concept of difference at the centre of my argument and feminist ontologies of the body as the medium affecting the political experience. I propose an autoethnographic method focused on presenting a cartography of urban resistance movements composed by difference and rhizomatic relationships in opposition to the homogenisation of ideas and demands of academic research for pilling up patterns, variables or categories. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the BwO is presented here as a theoretical tool that helps to introduce the case study in relation with its contexts, relationships, affects and networks. The second part of this research narrates and analyses how the proposed theory is unwrapped in the field. In doing so, I analyse my participation with and from within one of those collectives, Can Batlló and, more specifically, a project named La Fondona. Can Batlló is an autonomous and self-organised social centre in the neighbourhood of La Bordeta in Barcelona with which I worked during six months between 2013 and 2014. Throughout this period, I participated actively not only in Can Batlló but also in the actions and events that took place in the neighbourhood of Sants-Montjuïc and Barcelona. Hence, I present an analysis of the internal processes, relations and knowledge-practices as well as the relationships that this collective maintains with the community, its sociopolitical space and historical context. I argue those relations are constructed through rhizomatic principles as well as drawing from feminist approaches which put life and the body at the centre of their arguments. These outcomes will be finally reflected in chapter IX of this dissertation under the lenses of the research question posed in this thesis. That is whether current urban resistances challenge majoritarian social movements’ analyses. / Marie Curie Fellow Program and University of Utrecth

Spelindustrin är gigantisk och kontinuerligt växande, där detta inkluderar spelutveckling samt spelande av spel. Detta medför att en betydande mängd akademiker i sina yrkesliv kommer att beröra ämnesområdet spelutveckling. Trots detta faktum finns det en avsaknad av akademisk litteratur som behandlar ämnesområdet spelutveckling, specifikt med ett IS-perspektiv. För att fylla avsaknaden ämnar denna undersökning utöka det specifika konceptet inom spelutveckling som är “skapande av en 2D-spelmotor med tillhörande spel”. Att spela innebär hedonistiska upplevelser. Gäller denna hedonism också vid spelutveckling? Vilka utmaningar och vilken problematik uppstår vid utveckling av en spelmotor? För att utreda detta används en kvalitativ undersökning med en induktiv metodik via forskning genom design (eng. Research through Design, RtD) tillsammans med kollaborativ autoetnografi (Collaborative Autoethnography, CAE). Detta skapar ett unikt perspektiv som används för att producera välmotiverad vägledning för introduktion till ämnesområdet. Datainsamling utgörs av loggbok och dagbok där dessa används för att reflektera kring problem, utmaningar, framgångsfaktorer samt hedonistiska upplevelser inom processen. Undersökningens bakomliggande teori är baserat på Hedonic-motivation system adoption model (HMSAM) samt kriterier för utvärdering av ett lyckat RtD-projekt. Resultaten visar att spelutveckling är en komplicerad process, där egenskaper av spelutveckling identifierats och som bildat riktlinjer som förbereder akademiker inför framtida forskning och arbete. / The gaming industry is gigantic and continuously growing, which includes game development and gaming. This means that a significant number of academics will touch on the subject area of game development during their professional lives. Despite this fact there is a lack of academic literature which deals with the subject area of game development, specifically with an IS perspective. To fill the gap, this study aims to expand the specific concept in game development that is “creation of a 2D game engine with an associated game”. Gaming involves hedonistic experiences. Is this also associated with game development? What challenges and problems arise when developing a game engine? Answering this involves a qualitative study with an inductive methodology via Research through Design (RtD) together with Collaborative Autoethnography (CAE). This creates a unique perspective that is used to produce well-motivated guidance for introduction to the subject area. Data collection consists of a journal and diary where these are used to reflect on problems, challenges, success factors and hedonistic experiences within the process. The study’s underlying theory is based on the Hedonic-motivation system adoption model (HMSAM) and criterias for evaluating successful RtD projects. The results show that game development is a complicated process, where characteristics of game development have been identified which developed guidelines that prepare academics for future research and work.

In this dissertation the author embarks on a journey of storying and re-storying her life. Autoethnographic evocative personal narratives are used as the method of presentation. Congruent with a postmodern stance, the text repositions the reader as a co-participant in dialogue. In this journey there is a move from a reductionistic understanding of "self" to an understanding of "self" as socially constructed, multiple and changing processes. The author's process of differentiation is embodied and informed by this changing view of "self" as part of, being informed by, shaping and being shaped by the conversations she co-creates in dialogical contexts. This means taking a double-sided, reflexive view of relationships and systems, opens a space for a flexible way of being and imparts sensitivity to the discourses she co-creates. This journey entails taking action that keeps a self-reflexive dialogue going, allowing for different voices to emerge and various encounters to become possible. / Psychology / M.A. (Clinical Psychology)

This autoethnography explores the phenomenon of marriage after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Capturing as its data, through a series of audio-recorded conversations and journal entries, the first-hand, co-constructed experiences of a married couple, it provides an ‘insider’ and as such, intimate perspective on life together following such an unexpected, disruptive and life-altering event. Situated within ‘a systemic constructionist’ epistemology, it spotlights, in particular, the relational aspects of the post-TBI marriage unfolding over time, rather than just the individual perspectives of each spouse at a single point in time - as most existing studies on the topic do. As a qualitative study, it made allowance for the collection and use of rich, nuanced data so as to do some justice to the complex nature of the topic being studied. David Reiss’ explanatory theory on ‘crisis and the development of the family paradigm’ was applied deductively during the carrying out of a thematic analysis of the data, with the intention of bringing new insights to the understanding of the phenomenon of the post-TBI marriage. Data were also analysed inductively, in that themes emerging from the data itself were also used. A discussion based on the findings of the data analysis was proffered. Based on these findings, recommendations on what issues therapists working from within a family-systems orientation might focus their attention on were made. A recommendation for TBI couples to receive support from early intervention and follow-up services was also made, along with identifying the consequent need for research first to be done on developing and implementing such a service / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

After sixteen intensive months, I quit my employed position as a security guard at a local hospital. By drawing on my autoethnographic experiences in the form of “ethnographic fiction writing”, as well as eight interviews with my former male colleagues, I explore how the guards’ constructions of masculinity intersect with their security assessment and subsequent application of force, chemical incarceration, and other coercive security tactics on involuntarily-committed mental health patients. The narratives are framed by the available literature on gender and masculinity within the security, police, prison and military institutions, as well as the theoretical notions of gendered institutions (Acker), hegemonic masculinity (Connell & Messerschmidt), doing gender (West & Zimmerman), and Dave Holmes’s application of Foucauldian biopolitical power to forensic healthcare settings. These concepts are used in tandem with a creative methodological tool to reveal the “messy”, “bloody” and “gendered” ways in which hospital life unfolds between the guard, the nurse, and the patient prisoner. By escaping more traditional forms of academic writing, I am able to weave raw, sensitive and reflexive thoughts and emotions into the research design and analysis. The analysis is divided into two narratives: “Us” and “Them”. “Us” emphasizes the gendered ways in which the hospital guard learns, reproduces, resists, lives up, or fails to live up to the masculine codes of the profession. Here, the guard must confront cultural demands to demonstrate physical prowess, authority and heroism during a patient battle. “Them” explores how hegemonic masculinity shapes the hierarchical and coercive relations between the guard, the nurse, and the patient, and reinforces psychiatrized discourses that promote punishment, pain, bureaucracy and control. Overall, these findings call for the abolition of physical restraint, chemical incarceration and other coercive security measures within our healthcare institutions, and encourage future research to give voice to the lived experiences of women guards and security management teams.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Curriculum and Instruction / Kay Ann Taylor / This study explored Islamophobia and Muslims’ religious experiences in the Midwest. Its purpose was to propose a new theory named Critical Muslim Theory. The research methodology was autoethnography (me, the researcher) in concert with discovering in-depth experiences and narratives of nine Muslim participants (five Muslim females and four Muslim males) in dealing with Islamophobia. Religion became the centrality of Critical Muslim Theory in replacing race (as in Critical Race Theory) while centralizing other oppressions Muslims experience through intersections with religion and law, religion and gender, and religion and race. Critical Muslim Theory represents six basic tenets, namely: (a) Islamophobia is endemic and pervasive, (b) Critical Muslim Theory is critical towards how the dominant society views Islam and Muslims, (c) Islamophobia is a social construction, (d) Legal basis, (e) Intersectionality, and (f) Storytelling and counterstories reveal the oppression and pain of Muslims. An historical context was established for Muslims in the United States of America, although more research needs to be contributed to this area. Instances of interest convergence also were present, however, more research in this area is needed. One recommendation from this research suggests combating ignorance through education and establishing a pure relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims through dialogue for understanding. This study further proposes Muslim Double Consciousness as an area for future research. This topic was of interest due to proposing the theory, its further research and development, and the potential for Critical Muslim Theory to stand on its own as a methodology.