Background:
This project explores embroidery as a reflexive and arts-based extension of Organic Inquiry. Situated within transpersonal and decolonial research traditions, this work positions embroidery as a contemplative and creative methodology that transforms affect, intuition, and embodied knowing into material form. It uses embroidery to hold complexity and multiplicity without needing resolution, creating space for alternative and reparative ways of knowing in medical education research.

Researcher Positionality and Reflexivity:
As a PhD researcher in medical education, I occupy a position both within and outside the field. My standpoint as a woman of colour and immigrant to Canada informs every layer of this inquiry. Reflexivity is not peripheral but integral, as I navigate questions of belonging, authority, and representation within colonial academic structures.

Methods
Guided by the principles of Organic Inquiry, I present embroidery pieces reflecting on the emotional and intellectual stages of developing my doctoral proposal. The process follows a sequence of reflection, design, and stitching, integrating reflexive journaling throughout. Drawing on embroidery traditions relevant to the sites I study, to embody emotional states and evolving perspectives. Triangulation across embroidery practice, reflexive writing, and dialogic interpretation will support meaning-making and methodological integrity.

“Results”
The process surfaces layered emotions (uncertainty, resistance, and care) embedded in researching race and gender in medical education. Embroidery as a subliminal method and metaphor, slows the research process and stitches inquiry to the embodied presence.

Conclusion
I share how I use embroidery to reimagine research as an embodied act of care and resistance. The approach offers a decolonial, tactile method through which academic knowledge is not only analyzed but is transformed and stitched into being.

Abhinya Gulasingam, is a PhD student under the Department of Innovation in Medical Education at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. She recently completed her Masters in Public Health at the University of Ottawa, where most of her research focused on structurally marginalized individuals, including women of color and immigrants, examining how their experiences are often left out of dominant health narratives. She is an early career researcher with a commitment to bringing a critical and interdisciplinary lens to questions of policy, power, and justice in health, with a focus on reimagining more equitable futures in medical education and global health.

COI Disclosure: I do not have an affiliation (financial or otherwise) with any for-profit or not-for-profit organizations