Purpose: We aim to think critically about collaborative working through the practical application of an ethics of care approach. We address the following research questions: How can we embed an ethics of care into academic collaboration? What are the benefits and challenges of this kind of collaborative approach? Our contextual focus also incorporates a collective sensemaking of academic identities over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Design/methodology/approach: We focus on the activities of the ‘Consumer Research with Impact for Society’ (CRIS) Collective at and around the 2021 Academy of Marketing conference. We draw on the insights and labour of the group in terms of individual and collaborative reflexivity, workshops, and the development of a collaborative poem.

Findings: First, we present our ‘web of words’ as our adopted approach to collaborative writing. Second, we consider the broader takeaways that have emerged from our collaboration in relation to blurring of boundaries, care in collaboration and transformations.

Originality: The overarching contribution of our paper is to introduce an Ethics of Collective Academic Care. We discuss three further contributions that emerged as central in its operationalization: arts-based research, tensions and conflicts, and structural issues. Our application of the ‘web of words’ approach also offers a template for an alternative means of engaging with, and representing, those involved in our research.