This is my Abstract for ECPR 2022: For Presentation in Edinburgh

I propose a reflexive writing autobiography which draws from my current experience as a postgraduate student and my past journey to find my voice and learning how to write throughout the different stages of my life. My best academic writing, one that began to explore my own self as much as the world beyond, has been produced when it became about reclaiming the voice I reserved for my personal journals which I kept since age 7 as my need to write has been a constant companion throughout my migration, growing-up and adulthood. I reflect on the experience of learning how to write, first for myself, in early education, school, and finally about learning how to navigate the written and un-written rules of academic writing. I propose to reflect on the different roles and functions that writing has had in my life through an experimental autobiography exercise which tries to determine what constitutes my development as a student of writing, how political academia chooses to teach (or not teach) how to write, and searching for meaning within different academic modes of communication. This autobiography begins to ask questions about audience, translation, reflexivity and representation in the midst of my learning of how to become a sensitive communicator of my truth. It is not because I have learned how and why I write that I propose my article, but because I want to share being in the midst of experiencing the process of learning as a beginner writer creating spaces in which to connect.