ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part examines the collaborative processes of mourning and moving on with life, both for this group of people and this genre of work. It explores a presence of absence that exists in the restorative space of mourning that took place between “that which was lost’ and ‘that which continued to exist’ in this group of inquirers. This artful combination of more-than-human ideas and more-than-‘academic’ practices and practitioners has a tendency to emerge and develop in collaborative atmospheres of attunement and affinity rather than of institutional hierarchy, which is a difficult, but not impossible, environment to create within, betwixt and between twenty-first century communities and academies.
