DMP_1466 A woman's place is at the chalkface: using autoethnography alongside allegory to inform historical fiction writing

This qualitative practice-led research project resulted in a historical fiction novel creative artefact and an exegesis that investigated the writing practice and final creation through a neurodivergent lens (ADHD). As creative practice-led research is a field that is growing and includes a variety of experimental designs, this research project aimed to fill the current gap in the literature with a hybrid approach that incorporated autoethnography, allegory and extended metaphor, Todorov's narrative theory of equilibrium and historical (archival) research methods. The contextual background derived from my experiences of teaching in a high-school between March and August 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in Australia. My research design made a comparison of female and governmental officials' responses during the 'Spanish' pneumonic influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Both health disasters disrupted societal functioning and traces of policies that historically disadvantaged women through an expectation they would shoulder the burden of caring for their communities can still be found today. Autoethnographic writing practices have been shown to provide therapeutic benefits to the writer and validation for the reader as a means to compare their experiences. Conveying these findings through an allegorical creative artefact in the form of a novel and an exegesis, I aimed to share understanding not only with other female teachers and women late-diagnosed with ADHD, but also individuals who seek an opportunity to creatively and critically express themselves during or after exceptional situations when they are bound by policies that require confidentiality.