Engineer, Asian, and Gay AF: Counterstory as Means for Methodological Activism and Intersectional Healing in Engineering Education

Background: Recent calls for methodological activism have highlighted the need for new methodologies that empower marginalized students for social change. However, what these methodologies may look like in practice remains unclear.

Purpose: This paper presents counterstory as one activist methodology that responds to the call for methodological activism. Counterstory both addresses the complexities of intersectional oppressions within multiply marginalized students’ lives and provides avenues for theorizing about resistance, (re)affirmation, restoration, joy, and healing from traumas of oppression for marginalized engineering students to achieve liberation.

Method: To demonstrate counterstory in action, I construct an autoethnographic counterstory in short story format based on my lived experiences as a gay, Asian-American doctoral engineering student.

Results: I showcase how counterstory operates to challenge dominant discourses about spaces and identities, highlighting how unique modes of intersectional erasure, resistance, and healing can be elicited from the construction of counterstories.

Conclusions: Counterstory provides engineering education researchers with a critical methodological framework to continue unpacking systems of oppression in engineering while (re)centering marginalized student voices, agency, resistance, healing, and joy in academic literature. I provide ways for researchers and practitioners to use counterstory to work alongside marginalized students to fight for social justice.