‘Critical Friends’ in the Precarious World of Academia: Exploring Our Relational Journeying

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.