Cite your
well-being first.

What happens when personal life, mental health,
and Human-Computer-Interaction research become entangled?

What is the workshop about?

A DIS 2025 workshop exploring the entanglement of personal lives and mental health with HCI research.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research often requires deep engagement with people and their environments, making the re- searcher’s own well-being an integral, yet overlooked factor in the research process. Personal challenges, ranging from academic pressures to difficult life events, can influence how we conduct studies, interpret data, and relate to our work. Despite this, such experiences are rarely acknowledged in formal academic spaces, and there is limited discussion about their impact on research. Our workshop offers a space for HCI researchers to reflect on their well-being, share personal experiences, and examine how personal struggles intersect with their research practices. Together, we will foreground researchers’ well-being as an essential concern and explore how these lived realities can be meaningfully integrated into our methodologies. In doing so, we invite the HCI community to not only centre the human in our research, but also recognise the researcher as human; one whose life is deeply entangled with the work they do.

What will we be discussing?

01.

Entanglements between life and research.

How do personal events -- such as illness, grief, or burnout -- affect how we do research or make decisions about our work? In what ways do our identities, emotions, and life stages influence research topics, collaborations, or ethical positions? What happens when our own challenges impact those we work with (participants, collaborators, or students) and how can we navigate this with care? How can we recognise our vulnerability and lived experience as valuable sources of insight in research? What personal strategies have helped researchers cope, and how can we share them more openly?

02.

Navigating institutional structures.

How do major conference cycles, publication pressures, and funding demands affect our well-being, and how might these structures be rethought? What tensions arise when personal needs conflict with institutional norms or timelines? How can institutions integrate researcher well-being considerations into policy and daily practices, such as supervision and workload management? How can institutions, supervisors, and peers support researchers facing life disruptions, uncertainty, or care responsibilities? What successful support models exist, and how can they be adapted within HCI? How can supervisors support students facing personal struggles, and how can they manage their own challenges too?

03.

Tools, approaches, and interventions.

How can HCI methodologies better acknowledge our lived experiences, integrating personal struggles as part of knowledge production rather than treating them as external factors? How can creative or reflective approaches help show how research is shaped by personal life? How can technology, including AI, help support more caring or flexible research environments? What kinds of alternative research outcomes (e.g., exhibitions, interactive demos, or documentaries) allow space for personal experience to be acknowledged?

04.

Building a caring community.

How can we create safe spaces, both online and in-person, where we can discuss mental health and personal struggles without fear of stigma or judgment? What community-led initiatives (e.g., peer networks or mentoring schemes) have been successful, and how can they be sustained long-term? What role can the HCI community play in shifting academic culture to be more open, caring, and sustainable? How can conferences and research labs encourage open conversations on personal struggles without compromising professional credibility?

How can you contribute?

Cite Your Well-being First is a workshop for researchers, designers, and practitioners in HCI who want to reflect on how personal life, emotional experiences, and well-being shape the research we do—and how research, in turn, affects our lives. It’s open to anyone working within or alongside the HCI community, at any stage of their career.

You do not need to attend the workshop to be part of this conversation.

There are two ways to contribute:
1. Apply to attend the workshop at DIS 2025
2. Share a story, experiences or perspective to our growing archive

1. Attend the workshop.

Join us for a full-day session at DIS 2025 on July 5th 2025. The workshop will bring together a community to reflect on how personal experiences and well-being shape the way we do research, and how research affects us in return. We will come together to share lived experiences, build a collaborative story canvas based on contributions submitted in advance, and discuss how to shift HCI research culture toward greater care and openness.

The deadline to express interest in attending is Submissions will be dealt with on a rolling basis.

Apply to attend the workshop

2. Share your story.

As part of the workshop and its ongoing legacy, we are collecting a range of contributions that reflect how personal life and well-being intersect with research. These can be stories, moments, experiences, thoughts, feelings, or situations -- whether your own or ones you’ve witnessed in your community. The contributions will help shape conversations during the workshop, become part of an open-access living document that continues beyond the workshop and helps build community around the realities of doing research.
Submissions can be in any format that feels meaningful to you, including:
- Written reflections or stories.
- Poems, zines, or visual notes.
- Pictorials or short essays.
- Audio or voice recordings.
- Illustrations, collages, or sketches.

Contributions can be as anonymous or identifiable as you like, and as detailed or minimal as you feel comfortable sharing. You’ll also be able to choose how your submission is used.

There are two ways to submit:
Submit a story to the archive via Google forms
Submit a story to the archive on Miro

What will happen on the day?

Workshop Agenda.

What to expect on the day

Here's the rough structure of what will happen on the day:

Introductions: Welcome by the organisers and a round of introductions to get to know each other.

Icebreaker: A light activity to connect and begin reflecting on how life and research intersect.

Story Canvas: We’ll explore a collaborative canvas built from stories submitted before the workshop, surfacing shared experiences across the HCI community.

Adding Layers: Together, we’ll add three layers to the canvas:
- How personal life and mental health affects us
- How it affects those around us
- How it shapes our research

Group Reflection: We’ll close with a discussion on what we can do (individually and collectively) to support care in research culture.

Participation is always voluntary, with multiple ways to contribute based on your comfort level.

After the Workshop

The workshop is just the beginning. We will launch an online library of stories, featuring anonymous or named reflections on how personal life and research are entangled. The growing archive will help others feel seen, supported, and less alone. We will also co-write a Manifesto of Care, sharing practical ways to support researchers facing personal challenges. This will be shared with the HCI community and submitted to SIGCHI CARES, along with suggestions for updates to the code of conduct if needed. Participants may also join a collaborative academic publication based on anonymised experiences, highlighting how personal life shapes every stage of research. To sustain momentum, we’ll continue conversations through online meetups and future collaborations—building a community where care is part of research, not separate from it.