Unbind II Workshops at the Universities of Southampton and Cambridge

The first of two Unbind II workshops, on the themes of form and difficulty, took place on the 23^rd April 2026 at God’s House Tower in Southampton. Members of faculty from the University of Southampton joined the session from various disciplines within the Faculty of Humanities, including archive studies, history, literature, creative practice, and experimental writing. The half-day event was a consolidation of two workshops (one on each of the themes) to accommodate the availability of staff members. Both the workshops at Southampton and University of Cambridge were designed and facilitated by award-winning writer and creative practitioner Dr Jenny Chamarette.

Jenny began the workshop with the TOUCH principles: transparency, openness, understanding, confidentiality/care, and honesty. Participants were guided into an atmosphere of authenticity, space to experiment, explore, and consider things differently, and encouraged towards a creative vocabulary to discuss the realities and difficulties of longform writing. So often the dialogue around academic writing is productivity-focused, with an ambition towards creating more outputs that garner reward and praise. The workshop instead considered what is beneficial to the writer and the writing process, acknowledging the barriers and challenges that come with creating a longform work.

We were then led by Jenny into the first workshop exercise, which involved reflective writing around our longform projects: considering what we wanted our book projects to do, to hold, and to let go of. A further reflection question to carry into the first break was: If there were no limits, what form in the widest/wildest sense would your book take?

Arriving back from break, we were asked to consider our writing from yet another angle, focusing on the ‘extent of capability, not limits’, and shifting from a place of obligation to one of desire – to think about what possibilities and challenges this brought about in our minds. Jenny then further led us to explore our conceptions of form, drawing on Jane Alison’s book Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative. Various forms, and their component patterns, were introduced, such as the fern head (spiral), the curvature of a river (meander), explosion (splash of a water droplet), and arboreal forms, such as trees’ branching, and cellular structures, meaning repeating shapes, such as honeycomb or a foam of bubbles.

Thinking of form in this organic and macroscopic manner, we were led to consider our own longform writing project and envision what shape it could have. Jenny invited us to do this via drawing, encouraging us to go beyond the structures introduced via Alison, with options including additional natural forms, forms from the built environment, computer coding or algorithms, and prior literary forms, with ‘wild thinking welcome!’. We were guided to think about the book’s subject matter, structure, or timeline to frame the process. The variety of drawings in the workshop was as wide as the spectrum of unique writing projects represented, and many felt this process was a surprising and joyful way of considering options for their work outside the dominant or traditional forms commonly employed to shape a monograph.

An alternative approach was offered to write one’s book project in a paragraph framed as a genre of fiction, such as crime fiction, space opera, historical mystery, or gothic romance. This activity drew on techniques of ‘serious play’, which is recognised as a useful tool in problem solving, particularly when breaking out of fixed ideas (Shen, 2023). Jenny suggested using this technique to reframe the project’s synopsis, case study, argument, or another aspect that lingered in the writer’s mind. For both, we were to consider what we noticed by undertaking the activity about our own work.

In the discussion that followed, we examined the relationship between form and purpose, and the tension there, as well as how a form interacts with readership. Jenny conveyed how form can be a way to intervene in an argument within a field, or work within a pattern people might recognise (such as a fairytale). We were invited to think about the content/form relationships, and how this interfaces with articulating the stakes or ethics of an argument. Additionally, though the longform monograph is traditionally a solo endeavour with a single author, Jenny raised the concept of forms that benefit from multiple voices or a community of voices – as well as how we might include often-excluded voices, or play with different voices as a writing technique. One attendee expressed the importance of finding an ‘equanimous form’ by putting ordinary voices alongside ‘institutional voices’ and providing recognition for their epistemological contributions. We were encouraged to remember that the reader is also ‘you’ (the author), and to triangulate between the pleasure of writing and being read to create ‘a book people might actually read and enjoy’.

Workshop participants were then invited to discuss in pairs. Between us, we shared about what we most wanted our book projects to achieve in relation to form and structure, how this related to us as writers, our discipline/fields, and our readers, as well as what we hoped that academic books in our contexts could achieve in relation to their form and structure. This could be in the books themselves, for the discipline or field, or for readers. In subsequent group discussions, attendees were asked to consider the following question, in light of what was uncovered:

• If there were no limits, what form would you book project now take?
• How would you love the form of the book to be? Or the ideal form for longform books in general?
• Can you express the goal for the form of your book in one sentence?

Over the course of the break, we were asked to dwell on some reflection questions, leading onto the theme of ‘difficulty’. Jenny asked us to reflect on the current realities of our book writing process, and what might be holding us back from the goals we have developed. When we reconvened, we were then led into an exercise where we were to ‘write the problem’ in a letter to our Writer Self, describing a current difficulty being experienced, allowing for our Writer Self to respond back to us in the process. Following this piece of personal writing, we discussed in pairs the realities of our present writing, considering the ideal situation for the form of our book, what the present situation is, and what might be standing in our way – which could be personal, intellectual, relational or structural factors. After this process, a discussion was encouraged around these realities for each of us, and what could make the biggest difference in these challenges are difficulties in our writing practice. When considering these difficulties, we were asked to examine recurring patterns, form and shape, common or shared difficulties, and those which were distinctive or particular.

Difficulties raised by participants included intellectual uncertainty (‘I’m afraid I don’t know enough to be valid’), no research time (and feeling undeserving of a research time allowance), executive dysfunction and its interplay with academic pressures, and balancing being ‘fluent rhetorically’ and ‘telling the truth’ (and tensions with form). Another person mentioned balancing playfulness and confidence in voice. Linked to feelings of intellectual uncertainty, the notion of potentially ‘being wrong’ felt limiting. Participants expressed the necessity of acknowledging we are not omnipotent, and that our contributions will always be partial, ‘always provisional’, and this was a point of liberation. Others mentioned the challenge of our intellectual processes being internalised or infused with the structural pressures bearing down on the academic, particularly in the humanities, and particularly in a precarious time for academics within the humanities.

Benefits to writers facing these various difficulties included focusing on enjoyment of the process; refusing – or deprioritising – goals that do not serve; forming communities to support each other; safeguarding of time; and a number of individual actions to support and protect oneself intellectually and personally. This includes giving yourself permission to learn by doing, creating an emotional forcefield, and adding regular warm-ups or daily diarising to your practice. One attendee raised the importance of improving self-talk and relationship with yourself as a writer –  to give yourself the same compassion and generosity you would your students in their own work. Another suggested that in our practice, we should allow ourselves to behave like a craftsman, and to follow our energy as we work.

The workshop closed with reviewing our actions and takeaways, and thinking through what will support us in these actions and staying committed to them. As representatives of MORPHSS, Miranda and Siddharth raised the question: What would the participants want institutional culture to be? We recognise that many times early career researchers will have to write their first book with no funding or support, and that there are ethical questions around hiring practices that foreground the first book as a requirement as a result in terms of equity and inclusion. Initial responses highlighted how the lack of support actively demoralises early career researchers, who are just assumed to know how to write a book and have the capacity in their lives to do so, which leads to long-term damage for those who survive the ‘monograph hazing ritual’ within academia (and indeed, many do not). Institutions and governing bodies (?) need to genuinely consider what people need and provide it, including psychological safety for the academic, rather than assuming the creation of a book is ‘just part of their jobs’ – which itself assumes an inaccurate and outdated perception of career progression for academics that is entirely unrealistic in the current higher education environment.

Examination is needed around the way in which book publication signals the stages of an academic’s career and how this correlation actively discourages academic development – could there be a way for the stages of one’s career and book publication to become separate? Is the academic monograph damaged by purely functioning as a passport to the next stage, instead remaining focused on the contribution to knowledge it creates? There are also well-known criticisms around the focus on prestige and how this impacts both the publication process and how academic careers progress.

The workshop and Jenny’s adept guidance performed as a deeply valuable reflection space for the work of an academic writer and laid the groundwork for possible future collaborative endeavours and community spaces amongst the Southampton attendees.

The workshop held at the University of Cambridge focused on ‘openness in scholarly practice, understood not simply as open access compliance but as a question of how ideas are shared, developed, and made accessible over time’. The workshop took place on the 21^st May 2026 in the Milstein Room, Cambridge University Library, University of Cambridge. Attendees from the University of Cambridge represented a variety of subjects and disciplines, including early modern and French literature, digital cultures, political history, cultural heritage, and interdisciplinarity, with all attendees at various stages of writing a longform monograph or similar piece of work.

After beginning again with the TOUCH principles and communal agreement on workshop conduct, attendees were asked to briefly introduce themselves and the book project they are working on in pairs. We were encouraged to speak to the genuineness of our work-in-progress, not just in institutional terms. The workshop was intended as a space to speak and write openly about our work and our practice, encompassed by a sense of collective care, self-care, and to experience the activities of the day as invitational and permissive. We were guided towards identifying modest, achievable experiments with openness that we could introduce to our practice going forward from the day. When in discussion with each other, we were asked to employ active listening and consider three principles in our discussions: opening new doors to old problems, treating practice as a continuum not an end goal, and a focus on inclination not destination.

Jenny introduced the focus of openness to the workshop and posed the question: What does openness mean to you? A stack of colourful sticky notes of various shapes and sizes were provided, and participants each wrote their perceptions of openness on them, then sticking them to a large sheet of paper provided. Together we moved to read the notes and think about what others had written. This large sheet of paper played a further role later in the workshop, as more notes were added during subsequent activities.

We were then asked: Where does it feel generative, positive, useful, practical, or effective to be open? What is the impact of this openness? This could be in outputs, methods, collaborations, data, or processes.

The following types of openness were identified by the participants:
• Open to continuation
•  Open to new versions
• Open to different forms
• Openly accessible
• Openly approachable
• Openly understandable
     
Others mentioned conceptual revision as a ‘type of opening’ (in the process of revising, what are we open to?) and the open availability of the thesis as an example of open research processes. Collaboration was a key form of openness discussed, citing this practice as a sharing of struggle and ideas. Sketchbooks shared openly were raised as a way of sharing methods and process, also, as well as ‘process vulnerability’ in sharing drafts and notes – it was proposed that perhaps being open to vulnerability itself was an open practice.

Jenny then asked us to consider where we are ‘closed to openness’, or where being open might feel risky, exposing, challenging, impractical, or ineffective. We were also asked, what is the ‘impact of closedness’? In small groups, we discussed our thoughts and responses to these questions and wrote them on further sticky notes, adding them to the collective sheet.

Jenny invited us all to gather around the sheet of sticky note responses and spend five minutes reading and meditating on the responses, contemplating what others had said. Next, we considered the forms and patterns within this spectrum of closedness to openness, and gathered the notes together into thematic clusters that reflected either challenges to openness (such as industrial demands), areas of tension (freedom vs. constriction; relations, choice, and author agency), domains in which openness plays out (autonomy and collectivity; form and structure), and personally influencing factors (emotions). A corner of the sheet was given over to ‘utopias of short form & mixed form’ – while this was not populated with existing sticky notes, it was an identified area of hopefulness and proposed future direction.

From here, we proceeded to an activity of solo reflective practice, meditating on what we noticed about where we gravitate towards openness in our own writing practice, and where we shy away from it. After a period of writing, there was an open space for anyone to share from their observations. Responses included noticing the frictions that opening out can produce, and noticing the underlying assumptions in academic writing around opening and closing/closedness, particularly around endings and ‘completion’. One attendee noted that they nudge themselves towards openness, feeling that openness is a ‘type of creativity’, but lamented that the academic path seemed to close off the creative path, and this produced anxiety about opening up again in relation to combining their academic and creative practice. Another attendee reflected that they gravitate towards collaborative writing with others but feel they often lose their own voice by accidentally suppressing themselves, perhaps out of fear of letting others down. But they see group writing as an alliance and view the self as one actor in the alliance. In contrast, another felt afraid of collaborative writing, and practiced writing overall as solitary, but also expressed a desire to be more open to collaboration, because of the danger of losing the desire for connection within solitariness.

The pressure to pitch/brand/market/sell oneself and academic obligations to ‘perform’ were mentioned as key barriers to the types of openness discussed within the workshop. Also, attendees felt it was important to have the ability to choose when to be closed vs. open, because when we have the confidence to close/protect, we are therefore more confident to be open.

At the end of the workshop, we were asked to embrace the potential beginnings of our experiments with openness and commit to carrying them forward in our academic writing practice. Jenny briefly introduced the MORPHSS Catalogue of Open Research Practices in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and the typology of openness from the recently-released MORPHSS Report, encouraging workshop attendees to use these potential practices to experiment in their own journeys towards openness. To close, we dwelt on the importance of remembering what draws us to our subjects, our values, and holding our work to a threshold of higher honesty towards ourselves. Also, considering openness as something relational – meaning ‘together with’ and forming alliances and openness in small, meaningful steps.