The Central Question

How can archetypal and cross-cultural transformation stories be used as evidence-based instruments for cultivating self-trust, narrative recognition, and identity reclamation in adult learners …and how do we measure whether it is working?

A note on writing

I am interested in ideas that are both empirically testable and spiritually alive, because the tension between them is where the most interesting questions live. My goal is that my written work is both rigorous and resonant. Essays, working papers, and research notes will appear here as this work develops.

The scholar-practitioner position

I am exploring what it means to study something one is also living, namely how to hold this dual position without either over-identifying or falsely distancing. Through this work, I explore how embodied, ritual, and contemplative practices function as epistemological tools, not just wellness interventions.

  • On Story and Learning

    • What makes a story land as recognition rather than information, and what are the neurological, psychological, and cultural conditions that produce that difference?

    • How do mythopoeic narratives (ancestral, archetypal, cross-cultural) function differently from contemporary or personally-familiar stories in transformative learning contexts?

    • What is "resonance" as a learning mechanism, and can it be operationalized without reducing it?

    On Measurement and Methodology

    • How do we design psychometric instruments that are state-sensitive rather than trait-based, capturing who someone is becoming rather than who they are?

    • What does it mean to measure self-trust empirically, and where do existing adult learning instruments fall short of that goal?

    • How can qualitative phenomenological methods and quantitative instrument design be held in productive tension rather than opposition?

    On AI and Learning Design

    • What would a consent-based, responsiveness-driven AI system for story selection actually look like, and how is it different from personalization as the tech industry currently practices it?

    • How do we build AI-supported learning tools that preserve curatorial integrity and interpretive stability, rather than generating content that shifts meaning unpredictably?

    • What are the ethical obligations of learning designers who deploy AI in transformative or identity-adjacent educational contexts?

    On Power, Identity, and Transformation

    • How does the gender of a mythological or archetypal figure affect the resonance of a transformation story for learners who have been historically excluded from heroic narratives?

    • What is the relationship between narrative recognition and the reclamation of suppressed or conditioned-away identity?

    • How do systems of conformity (organizational, cultural, familial) function as learning environments, and what does it take to unlearn them?