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AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC TRANS-MEDIA JOURNEY FROM XINJIANG [XUAR] TO HARMONY
A WORK IN PROGRESS

A Stranger Here Myself is an evolving, longitudinal project examining inter-cultural identity construction. Borne of an Australian foreign teacher's lived experience in China since first arriving in Xinjiang [XUAR] in 2011 to returning to Australia for its multicultural Harmony Week festival in 2025. Comprising a core vlog and ebook range it is fully accessible through the Project Index link on this website's home page / header menu. Additions to this project - videos, blogs, PDF downloads, article links are added to this central index as they eventuate. Welcome to join and share your inter-cultural journey.

Autoethnography is "an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience. This approach challenges canonical ways of doing research and representing others and treats research as a political, socially-just and socially-conscious act. A researcher uses tenets of autobiography and ethnography to do and write autoethnography. Thus, as a method, autoethnography is both process and product."
(Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011)

“An Australian Inter-Cultural Communication [IC] education professional's trans-cultural transformation from first arrival in China, in Xinjiang [XUAR]'s Urumqi, on 2011/07/03, to panel participation in the 11th Nishan Forum on World Civilizations, in Shandong's Qufu (Confucius' birthplace / home), on 2025/07/09.”

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Humbled + honoured to have been a group panel participant at the 11th Nishan Forum on World Civilizations on 2025/07/09 in Confucius' birthplace / hometown: Qufu, Shandong, China.

Within the Forum's central theme of "Beauty in Diversity: Nurturing Understanding Among Civilizations for Global Modernization", my particular group session topic was "Mutual Assistance in Pursuing Modernization". In this context, I focused less on formal philosophical, political or socio-economic perspectives than on the essential role of what Xi Jinping identified as "mutual learning" in bridging dialogue and promoting integration among civilizations (CGTN, 2025). Specifically: how this can be achieved methodologically within Inter-Cultural Communication [IC] pedagogic practice?

Forum keynote speaker Prof. Roger Ames suggested that the limitations of Western dualism - relativism vs. absolutism - is surmounted by a third option, that of Confucian relational equity as facilitating a pluralism fostering "superlative and inclusive harmony out of difference"

AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC TRANS-MEDIA JOURNEY FROM XINJIANG [XUAR] TO HARMONY A WORK IN PROGRESS

AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC TRANS-MEDIA JOURNEY FROM XINJIANG [XUAR] TO HARMONY
A WORK IN PROGRESS