Endarkened Narrative Inquiry

Endarkened Narrative Inquiry reimagines inquiry as a relational, embodied, and ethical practice. Drawing together theory, lived experience, and guided reflection, it challenges detached models of research and invites more accountable, responsive ways of listening, interpreting, writing, and representing knowledge.

Conceptual grounding is paired with reflective prompts that ask readers to examine positionality, responsibility, and representation in knowledge production. Reflexivity, embodiment, and spirituality are taken up not as supplements to inquiry but as integral to how knowledge is formed, interpreted, and carried forward. In this way, the text supports work that is more attentive, accountable, and grounded in the realities it seeks to engage.

Written for researchers, scholars, graduate students, educators, and reflective practitioners, this book will resonate most with those working across qualitative, narrative, arts-based, and culturally responsive traditions. It speaks to those navigating the strain between who they are and how academic or professional spaces ask them to appear, and who are seeking ways to conduct inquiry without leaving parts of themselves behind.

Keondria McClish Boyd’s work explores human development and the role narratives play in personal and academic growth through an intersectional lens, with particular attention to lifespan, adult education, leadership, and spirituality. She developed Endarkened Narrative Inquiry (ENI) in her 2018 dissertation and continues to extend its contributions across research and practice. Her work has been published in Qualitative Inquiry, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, the Journal of Continuing Higher Education, and the BYU Journal of Public Law.

She has presented widely at conferences and is a member of the Association of Leadership Educators (ALE), a Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) through the National Council on Family Relations, and an International Coaching Federation-certified coach. Through her company, Sienna and Slate, Keondria supports scholars, practitioners, and creatives in developing work that is both rigorous and aligned.