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In this article, we report on a follow-up session that was organised to share findings with children about a participatory research project they had been involved in a few months earlier. This was motivated by the ethical concern that it is the children’s right to be informed about the results of the research. In the process of reflecting on the research project, however, the children diverted the researcher’s focus onto aspects of the research that mattered to them. Rather than discussing the results and the benefits of the research, the children were keen to discuss issues of representation, questioning the researcher about pseudonyms, transcribing and their role and presence in the dissertation. The follow-up session opened up a transformational space where both the child participants and the adult researchers gained new understandings about research processes and relationships. We argue that such retrospective reflection can be a beneficial tool to explore children’s post hoc interpretations about the research, while developing researcher reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Within qualitative research, much can be learned from the influence of researcher positionality on the research process. Reflecting upon ethnographic fieldwork undertaken for a doctoral study, this paper explores how researcher positionality not only shapes research motivations but also situates the researcher and the 'researched', impacting how data is created and interpreted. There is a long history of engaging with positionality in qualitative research, however, oftentimes this engagement is purely descriptive, providing a 'shopping list' of characteristics and stating if these are shared or not with participants. It is important for engagement with reflexivity to go beyond providing a 'shopping list' of positionality statements to develop deeper discussions about the fluidity of positionality across the research process. Using the previously established concept of 'kitchen table reflexivity', I reflect on how talk allows researchers to outline shifts and adaptability in positionality as research progresses. I expand this concept to argue that kitchen table reflexivity can occur in conversations during fieldwork with participants, utilising a range of in/visible tools at the researcher's disposal. For example, the spaces between fieldwork encounters, the 'waiting field', is often where observations and informal discussions with participants take place. Using fieldnotes and interview data, this paper outlines how positionality fluctuates and interweaves with the theoretical, methodological, and analytical approach taken. The paper concludes by restating the importance of meaningful engagement with positionality throughout qualitative research, in order to avoid static and hollow positionality statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explain and describe the use of presuppositional interviews as means of the researcher being able to expose their own, often unknown, assumptions about the phenomena of interest. Within this, we provide a philosophical and practical account for the development and use of a presuppositional interview from an insider perspective to expose insights which influence researcher reflexivity and directly impact on the research process. Author A's hermeneutic phenomenological study seeks to gain insights into the lived experience of children learning mathematics in outdoor environments, such as forests and woodland. The paper describes how the reflexive method of presuppositional interviewing helped him to understand more about his research position and find a clearing in his 'Being in the Wood.' A template for a presupposition interview schedule is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers' reflexivity usually focuses on the spatiality and sociality of their ethnographic fieldwork. As a result, the temporal context of their positionality, whereby their various identities interact with one another at different research phases, is often overlooked. This paper adopts an agentic intersectional approach and draws from our separate studies of Thai migrant women in Belgium and Hong Kong to unpack the temporality of the power dynamics between study participants and us (the researchers). Through this reflexive exercise, we identify three salient aspects: first, different identities of the researchers intersect at each phase of the study; second, researchers are dependent on gatekeepers and study participants, notably during the data-gathering phase; and third, the changing researcher–participant dynamics throughout the research process are embedded in broader relations of power that encompass social institutions and migrant/ethnic networks. Hence, researchers' self-discipline and constant awareness of positionality are of utmost importance for achieving well-situated knowledge (re)production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates on positionality and partisanship in the research process are long-standing, complex and often highly contentious. Engaging with, and contributing to, both these key debates, this paper introduces the concept of victim-as-researcher. This draws from the author's experiences of undertaking research in Trinidad and Tobago with a group of offenders who had committed similar offences to that which the researcher was herself a victim. There is a paucity of literature which speaks to the experiences of victims of serious, violent crime who subsequently engage in qualitative research with offenders who have been convicted of offences similar to the ones experienced by the researcher and which, therefore, can elicit trauma whilst in the field and through analysis. This paper aims to extend the methodological literature on positionality and victimology by foregrounding the victim-as-researcher as an important category in reflexive sociological and criminological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging in 'reflexive practice' throughout the research process (Benson and O'Reilly, 2022) and a 'reflexivity of discomfort' (Hamdan, 2009) through an intersectional lens, this article presents a reflective account of accessing and conducting observations and interviews at a South Asian women's organisation, in North England, to explore Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim (PBM) lone motherhood. It critically explores how researchers' own subjectivities and intersecting identities – in this case, my intersecting identities and positionalities as a young British Pakistani Muslim women, researcher and volunteer – impact interactions in different circumstances with different groups of participants and the importance of having continuous critical self-awareness. Moving beyond simplistic insider–outsider debates, the paper contributes towards further developing reflexivity debates taking an 'intersectional reflexivity' approach. It argues for thinking about the research process and engagements in the field as socially constructed, changing, adapting and negotiated overtime and to utilise intersectionality to unpick broader categories. Finally, it encourages researchers to adopt reflexivity in their research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the communicative, cultural, and practical aspects of being a hard-of-hearing (HH) researcher who studies D/deaf people's smartphone use through 20 in-depth interviews. This context presents the conflict between seeing deafness as a disability and seeing Deaf people as members of a cultural minority. This complexity of 'subaltern-researcher' concept combines with the limitations caused by conducting research as a marginal member of the academy, which in turn prompts the researcher's conflict between the commitment to marginalized research participants and the able-bodied academic obligation to act according to able-bodied research, analysis, and standards for publication of findings. This paper suggests a reflexive description of identity, culture, senses, and communication, which interacts with the social responsibility of the disabled researcher, and the interviewees' expressed agency. As such, this article contributes methodological and communicative insights on inclusive qualitative methods regarding both disabled participants and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses methodological adaptations to participatory methods for reflexive environmental management. Reflexive approaches to research methods as process, this article contends, can elucidate social dynamics that standard sampling frames and rote procedures may elide. This argument is supported through a discussion of key insights from scholarship about participatory research methods, as well as auto-reflections on methodical adaptations undertaken while conducting photovoice research on environmental management in peri-urban villages of Southwest China. Reflexive adaptations to participatory methods discussed in this paper include ethnographic attention to forms of refusal, suspended participation, and individual interviews with and without visual aids. These methodological adaptations highlight relations of power between researchers and participants, as well as amongst participants. They also highlight diverse social needs and uneven environmental management processes. Although reflexive approaches to participatory methods are key to producing more widely representational findings and socially just sustainability practices, they are not a panacea for universal inclusivity. Reflexive methodological adaptations have their own limitations and introduce new power relations between participants and researchers. The article concludes with a discussion of how reflexive methodological adaptations bear on research praxis. In particular, the conclusion highlights how reflexive adaptations to research methods are crucial to socially just environmental management and sustainability practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings reflexivity into conversation with debates about positionality and live sociology to argue for reflexivity to be reimagined as an enduring practice that is collaborative, responsible, iterative, engaged, agile and creative. We elaborate our argument with reference to examples and contemplations drawn from our experiences researching what Brexit means for Britons living in the EU-27 for the BrExpats research project, which was informed from the outset by reflexive practice. We outline three (of a number of) potential strategies for engaging in reflexive practice: reflexive positioning, reflexive navigating and reflexive interpreting or sense-making. We acknowledge that these are not separate actions in practice but are conceptually distinguishable aspects of an ongoing reflexive practice, informed by our understanding of the cognitive relationship between reflexivity and practice theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solicited diaries/journals are increasingly popular as an innovative qualitative method in the social sciences for better understanding people’s everyday lived experiences. In this article we create a framework for maintaining rigour while using such diaries. First, we systematically evaluate 43 research papers focusing on the method, drawing on Baxter and Eyles’ (1997) seminal evaluation of rigour in qualitative human geography research. We ascertain that significant improvements could be made to procedures for obtaining and analysing diary content. Second, we develop a framework to encourage rigour in diary research. We test our framework by evaluating research conducted by two of our authors who employed solicited diaries with street vendors in Vietnam. We propose that our analysis and framework can help social scientists improve the rigour of solicited diaries as a research method, and provide a model for enhancing rigour in other emerging qualitative approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexivity is continually called for as a marker of quality ethnographic research. In this paper we put reflexivity to 'work', providing a critical commentary on data generated through ethnographic fieldwork in high-performance disability sport. Drawing on Bourdieu's reflexive sociology, we situate the ethnographer in the field of disability sport, turning a reflexive lens onto the practices that are associated with occupying the role of coach and researcher simultaneously. We illustrate the centrality of researcher subjectivity – through the reflexive device of 'crossing fields' – as a productive resource for examining the social and intellectual unconscious embedded in the process of doing ethnographic research. In so doing, we provide a unique example of how reflexive practice can offer a rigorous, power-conscious reading of an ethnography of high-performance coaching in disability sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much debate around the ‘voice’ of the child in qualitative research. This paper contributes to these discussions by drawing on the philosophy of Reggio Emilia, which emphasizes dialogical encounters that recognize the value of children's subjectivities. The paper critically reflects on a qualitative study of primary education during the COVID-19 pandemic that involved children aged 5–7 (n = 30), teachers (n = 6) and parents and carers (n = 18) in Wales. The study generated data using creative methodologies, field notes and qualitative interviews. The philosophy of Reggio Emilia was utilized to be reflexive about the processes of research design, fieldwork, data analysis and dissemination, questioning tensions between voice and silence and how research teams can face and respond to the challenging issues that complicate the intent of respecting children's subjectivities and perspectives. A key lesson from this process of reflection and questioning was the need to be attentive to and attuned with the subtleties of children's paralanguage and to maintain a level of flexibility in research design and processes that respected children's requirements and preferences. While the study focussed on children's experiences, the lessons learnt from evaluating the study in relation to the philosophy of Reggio Emilia have value for wider qualitative projects with diverse communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative research literature discusses how power shapes the interview process and the resulting data and explores the epistemic basis for interview research theoretically. However, processes of negotiating epistemic authority in the interview situation, and in data analysis, are investigated less frequently. This paper draws on 34 interviews with social science academics interested in gender, feminist and queer studies in four English universities to reflect on the epistemological challenges of researching social researchers about their work. Through this, it contributes to explorations of how, in qualitative interviewing and data analysis, we can combine a critical reading of interview data with a commitment to respondents’ accounts of their realities. I argue that Black, anti-colonial, queer, feminist epistemological approaches can be well suited to navigate this challenge. I advocate for an epistemic reflexivity that acknowledges the fluidity of speaker positions while taking structural power relations, and their effects on epistemology, seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical epistemologies and methodologies have over time challenged the static and mono-dimensional approaches to fieldwork, allowing researchers to contemplate and conduct their research in spaces of in-betweenness. Despite this important shift, the essentialist idea that both 'the field' and 'home' in a fieldwork setting must be actual places persists. In this article, we challenge the conceptualization and operationalization of 'home' not only as the juxtaposition to 'the field', but also as the embodiment of a place in a specific temporality. We argue that the postulation of 'home' as a constant disregards the non-predetermined and unpredictable nature of fieldwork relationships that are often complicated by implicit and explicit power dynamics, especially in places researchers identify as 'home'. We demonstrate that unequal power relations, especially (1) between the Global North and Global South, (2) between majority and minoritized groups, (3) among genders, and (4) between elites and non-elites, require us to envisage 'the field' and 'home' in relative terms. We propose the reconceptualization of fieldwork place as a hybridized space that conjoins 'the field' and 'home' as 'field-home', particularly at a time when research mobility is restricted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this way, we extend the literature on issues related to power, positionality and reflexivity in qualitative research, and provide practical insights for those preparing for fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the qualitative interview as a site for meetings between interviewers and interviewees from groups that are in conflict. It shows how interviewees who initially resisted participation and voiced what one called the ‘official story’ of her group moved beyond this position enabling the encounter to become a meaningful experience for both parties. This critical case analysis is based on three interviews from three different studies and follow-up interviews with interviewers and interviewees. The paper describes six phases of the encounters found in all the interviews (on guard, the ‘official story’, expert position, confrontation, looking for common grounds, and beyond the ‘official story’) and explores the conditions that brought about bidirectional communication and intimacy. The findings are discussed in light of current debates around reflexivity, positionality, and power relations in qualitative interviewing. The article highlights the importance of the historical and political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on the author's experiences and reflections of researching vulnerable people for a housing research project, this article explores the ethical dilemmas, and the health and safety challenges, of conducting in-depth, qualitative interviews with 'vulnerable' research participants in their own homes. Vulnerability, in a housing research context, takes account of: living in poverty; insecure housing/employment situations; poor health and/or mental ill health; alcohol and /or drug dependency, etc. Diary notes are used to illustrate the challenging situations that can unfold when working alone in the field in disadvantaged areas, with vulnerable people, which can present physical and emotional risk. Concern with risk and the potential impact on individuals is two-fold: that on the participant; and that on the researcher. Through reflexivity and revisiting of experiences in the field, this paper explains the difficulties and negotiations, and it provides some suggestions for better research practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexivity involves examining one's background and perspectives in relation to the research topic, participants, and the processes and practices of research. Building on the growing field of utilizing arts-based practices in teaching qualitative research, in this article we examine how one doctoral student's engagement with drawing and painting within and beyond a qualitative research class supported her developing reflexivity. Guided by an interactional ethnographic perspective, we conducted domain, taxonomic, and discourse analyses of the student's art, reflection journals, video of a class presentation, and retrospective reflections she wrote three years later. Through these analyses we make visible that reflexivity through art creates potentials for understanding and transcending one's background to create new opportunities for learning about self and research. We also argue that deepening reflexivity requires a commitment to engage in the discomforts of learning in order to develop new ways of thinking and researching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the implications of qualitative research on migration in terms of reflexivity and positionality. In particular, it presents research as care, revolved around three main critical nodes of reflection: the epistemological importance of emotions, intersectional positionality and the ethics of care. Drawing upon the insights concerning a qualitative research on migration in Italian shrinking areas, the contribution underlines the importance of conceiving research as a process of negotiation. Moreover, it shows how positionality in qualitative migration research is not static but flexible, and is conditioned by different emotionalities emerging during the fieldwork. In this sense, the continuous negotiation that exists between researchers and participants can imply affectivities and kinship that valorises the relationships created during the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I describe an approach to analysing the affective flows produced in sociomaterial assemblages of visual images and humans in research processes. The approach combines Deleuzian understandings of repetition and difference, and of lines of articulation and flight, with interpretative techniques drawn from visual social semiotics. I use examples from my research into images shared by professionals on Twitter to illustrate how this approach can reveal not only the forces, intensities and hidden logics that lead to particular responses, but also the ways in which these responses impact on research decisions and interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative analysis is, inherently, a complex, messy and nuanced process. In the context of contested notions of validity, for novice researchers there is therefore an attraction in adopting established, systematic and formulaic approaches. Yet, in prioritising methodical processes, over critical engagement and methodologically coherent quality criteria, these approaches can risk limiting research to a process of cataloguing and reporting face value readings. This research note reflects on an attempt to address and examine this risk in a doctoral research project by progressing from an initial thematic interpretative approach to data analysis to a secondary stage informed by ideas of interruptive analysis. The paper introduces a conceptualisation of interruption as prioritising interrogation of aspects of presentation, over a focus on the interpretation of content or a shift from analysing what is said, to how it is said. Empirical data from research exploring doctoral students’ methodological decision-making is utilised to illustrate the approach and to provoke consideration of the value of embracing disruption. Analysis of two narrative accounts from the study is presented, providing a snapshot of the different understandings and an insight into the learning it generated. The learning in this research note is intended to act as an illustration and provocation for thinking rather than any form of procedural guide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses some of the challenges involved in conducting research with children and young people outside of the home and school environments. We respond to the need to develop new child-centred research techniques which move beyond existing power relations among children and adults by anchoring our approach in the idea of mystery. The paper reports on research utilising a mixed-method design which includes one new technique – the Big Brother diary room. We discuss the unpredictable nature of the fieldwork, reflect on the ‘messiness’ of the research process, and critically evaluate our own research design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this reflexive essay, I raise issues about power dynamics between interviewers and interviewees based on my experiences conducting research interviews in South Korea. I focus on the sociocultural contexts that drive social agents' behaviors in the interview process, which in Korean Confucian contexts include respect for adults and educational fervor. A particular configuration of authority relationships was evident in each scenario, showing how sociocultural contexts underlie the complicated power dynamics of interview situations, which can be further complicated by topics that require participants to share their intellectual notions. Based on my interview experiences, I argue that acknowledging these social contexts and their impacts on power relations will serve to strengthen the depth of engagement in interviews and therefore the quality and potential impact of qualitative interview research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we explore the concept of solidarity in the context of empirical social inquiry, a concept that is underdeveloped in the research methodology literature. We do so by drawing connections and contrasts to other more established methodological concepts such as reflexivity and positionality. We draw upon existing literature as well as reflection and analyses of our personal experiences and research endeavors to illustrate the nature of solidarity as a relationally grounded transformational practice. Through our exploration, we aim to articulate principles that can be utilized to understand solidarity as a methodological concept, based on our assertion that through such an understanding, we are better placed to engage in transformative and justice-oriented research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to the literature on power dynamics and researchers' positionality in qualitative research, by shedding light on the experiences of a minority ethnic researcher with a working-class background. Drawing on Bourdieusian concepts, it discusses how middle-class children confronted the researcher with language stigma and how they, while drawing boundaries vis-à-vis those who 'lack' cultural capital, (unintentionally) drew boundaries against the researcher herself. In turn, it illustrates how during interviews with working-class children, manners had to be adopted with which the researcher is no longer familiar. This article calls on ethics committees to more strongly consider how researchers might become 'vulnerable' themselves during fieldwork and to acknowledge intersectional experiences that potentially cause power dynamics to shift, even in research involving groups that are socially believed to have little power, such as children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to literatures on sociological live methods by advocating for 'playing' with the concept of slow methods. Slow methods include a reflexive disposition towards the unfolding of social life in ordinary spaces (dwelling), the use of drawing as an embodied tool for understanding this unfolding (doodling) and the combination of these approaches into writing which deliberately seeks to evoke the liveness of the social world (describing). It draws on an ethnography of a joint-use public-academic library and several scenes selected from its fieldwork. I make three arguments: first, I argue for analogue methods to compliment digitally focussed live methods. Second, I explore the value of slow methods for being drawn into a scene and drawn to see its micro-happenings, particularly in spaces where the social world unfolds in mundane and uneven ways. Third, I argue the approach allows 'shy researchers' to engage attentively and reflexively in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research as a social practice enacts social hierarchies in the relation between researcher and the researched. Taking up the critique of the consequences of such hierarchies in the production of knowledge, participatory methods aim to decolonize this power relation. This article contributes to this topic by discussing limits of participation, highlighting the often unexpected reemergence of power and hierarchies in a leveled research field. We take a closer look at how inequalities are emerging and negotiated in the research process. Troublings of hierarchies during the research process are considered as eminently productive for the analysis of social inequalities and for maintaining a precarious ethics of care in the research process. Other articles that also contribute to the special issue opened by this contribution analyze sources and expressions of hierarchy and power troubles during qualitative research by putting a specific focus on unforeseen challenges, inversions, and obstacles that arise during research processes. The contributions demonstrate what specific insights into social inequalities can be gained through an analytical focus on such troubles. It is demonstrated that a critical reflection of inequalities in research relations can also be a contribution to research on social inequalities in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary social science research is often concerned to engage with and promote particular forms of postmodern and innovative data production, such as photo-elicitation, autoethnography or free association interviews. This fascination with the latest and greatest techniques has been accompanied by an ever more fragmented range of research methods training for students where the week-by-week shift between approaches engenders a disjointed view of becoming the researcher. This individualisation of techniques has set up rival camps and critiques where the common ground of being embedded in traditional ethnography is often forgotten. For researchers, who began their academic careers in the ethnographic tradition, there is an appreciation of the holistic base of enquiry from which a family of methods can be effectively employed. However, more recently qualitative researchers have been distracted by ‘the technique’; a distraction that can blind them to the occupation of ethnography. Concurrently, there have been shifts in the social and economic expectations placed on qualitative inquiry that have acted to close down spaces of ethnographic teaching and practice. In response, this article focuses on the importance of the ‘waiting field’; an opportunity to explore the times where real lives carry on before they make room for the intrusion of the data production of ‘the technique’ and remind us that much qualitative research is, in fact, an ethnographic undertaking: one that encompasses the researcher within and beyond the field. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Central to any anti-oppressive research endeavour is the importance of reflexivity and the genuine attempt from researchers to turn the research tools on themselves (Hermans, 2019). Beyond research, the social work profession has much to learn from the reflexive accounts of researchers. Issues of identity, language and culture are widely recognised as important when working with service users and carers in social work; however, this is much less the case when considering identities of social work practitioners. Starting with personal and professional positions of Black female and Deaf female social workers, this article reveals the reflexive journey of the Black female hearing researcher undertaking the research. The article takes an original approach to theory construction by introducing ' Africanist Sista-hood in Britain' and marrying this with Deaf cultural discourse in the form of Deafhood, Deaf ethnicity and Deaf Gain, all of which make valuable contribution to existing debates in identity politics and the importance of self-naming and self-actualisation. Within the article the author discusses epistemological challenges in theory construction, data collection, language, transcription and dissemination, as they linked to power, privilege and the different forms this took within the research. The article makes a number of significant contributions. It introduces Africanist Sista-hood in Britain as a useful theoretical framework in research and at the same time encourages theoretical alliances across other marginalised groups. In discussing issues of knowledge production beyond existing hegemonic frames, it offers a broadening of the lens beyond the ways in which identity, culture and ethnicity are currently understood in the mainstream. In discussing Deaf cultural discourse and its influence on methodological choices it invites researchers to better engage with these issues from perspectives articulated by Deaf people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexivity is considered a hallmark of qualitative research. With the continued growth in team-based research, more attention is needed to what it means to practice reflexivity within the context of these research collaborations. In this article, we draw upon scholarship on reflexivity and our own experiences to develop what we term 'collaborative feminist reflexivity' (CFR). CFR represents a form of reflexivity that is distinctly collaborative in how it is enacted, grounded in feminist epistemological and ethical commitments, holistically engaged throughout the research process, and multifaceted, involving multiple formal and informal practices. In critically analyzing our own reflexive practices in the context of an interdisciplinary, multi-method study on hashtag activism related to domestic violence, we seek to identify specific practices for research teams as well as interrogate the potentials and limitations of these practices for enacting feminist reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-produced research is said to create new knowledge through including the perspectives of those traditionally excluded from knowledge production, which in turn is expected to enhance research quality and impact. This article critically examines academic and UK voluntary sector literature concerning participatory and co-produced approaches to explore how quality is currently understood in co-produced research. Drawing on early career researchers' experiences of a programme of co-produced research, the authors illustrate how theory and practice of co-production can differ, and the implications for conceptualising 'research quality' within co-produced research. Drawing on debates within qualitative research, community work and policy studies, the article outlines a potential framework for raising questions of 'quality', co-produced by research partners as part of the research process. Key dimensions of this framework are process, outcomes and autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-conceptualizes the highly ambivalent relationships between researchers and research participants in conflict zones, with a focus on recognizing respondents' multiple and fluid positionalities. Standardized and dominant approaches to qualitative research are largely based on essentialist and infantilized portrayals of research participants and neo-colonial assumptions regarding the research relationship: informants are presumed to be inevitably vulnerable and in need of external protection, while the researcher is positioned as the omnipresent expert in control of the research process. In reality, however, research participants rarely exclusively occupy the 'oppressed victimhood' axis of identity and frequently take on active roles in the research and data collection process in a myriad of ways. I elucidate how especially in (post-)conflict zones, research participants frequently re-shape power dynamics by exercising agency over the researcher and the research process. While previous studies have considered how informants' agency can shape processes of knowledge production, in this article I expand this focus by examining how key-informants can, and frequently do, facilitate the researchers' safety and security. I specifically draw on personal experiences of empirical research in Northern Uganda. I demonstrate how in a particular moment of post-conflict insecurity – while being trapped in-between the exchange of gunfire between the Ugandan police and an armed group – one of my key-informants ensured my physical protection and safety, thereby exercising power over me and the research relationship. The key-informants in this context thus occupied multiple positionalities – ranging from informant to protector, evidencing that research relationships are never static but rather contextual, shift and fluctuate. Such ambivalent and fluid power dynamics are more reflective of the lived realities of qualitative research and can influence the research process by positioning researchers and research participants on more equal terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present research findings from an arts-based research (ABR) project that aimed to redress the symbolic effects of negative recognition associated with place-based stigma. Focusing on two prominently stigmatised neighbourhoods in Melbourne and Hobart (Australia), we explain the rationale for the study and how arts-based tactics were used for phenomenological explorations of familiar environments and to generate alternate, faithful and compelling portrayals of neighbourhoods that stemmed from residents' actual experiences. Our approach to ABR blended sociological concerns with socially engaged practices that emphasised creative and dialogic tactics, provocations and immersive experiences. We explain how art-based tactics were incorporated into artist residency projects that comprised four parts: local induction; excursions to art galleries; a six-week workshop programme; and exhibition events. Following this, interviews were conducted with artist-residents at the conclusion of the projects. Both the artistic outcomes and participants' reflections provide evidence that blending socially engaged art practices and participatory methods can help residents and researchers navigate the internalised effects of stigma in processes of meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a feminist theoretical framework, this article reflects on the issues of power between 'the researched' and 'the researcher' and highlights the problematic of shared identities and dissimilarities. The article considers the epistemological challenges encountered by a Black female (mother) 'foreigner' researcher and the gendered implications of the insider–outsider binary in conducting doctoral research. Additionally, this article presents the personal reflections of the 'outsider within' during data collection, in order to contribute to ongoing dialogue on researchers' reflexivity and positionality in qualitative research. It is the researcher's responsibility to make a conscious effort in comprehending how paramount her position is, in order to negotiate and reflect relevant spaces during fieldwork. This article concludes that the insider/outsider dynamics do not necessarily work against the researcher/researched but could be appreciated for adding nuance and ambiguity to research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the question of sleeping (or not) during the course of ethnographic fieldwork. It is argued that the concept of what is termed here 'sleepwork' has yet to be fully addressed or adequately problematised in the fields of sociology and social anthropology, in particular. The first part of the article highlights the relative silence about sleeping and fieldwork in the literature on qualitative research methods, and reflects upon why this subject is largely absent from the ethnographic corpus. I then make a number of propositions about some potential methodological strategies for incorporating 'sleepwork' into fieldwork. The second part of the article suggests that data analysis should not be seen as an activity that only occurs in states of wakefulness, but rather as a 24/7 activity that is undertaken with varying intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of reflexivity, emotion work and insider/outsider researcher status in one queer researcher's experiences of conducting fieldwork. Through exploring field diaries and interview extracts, this article highlights the impact of being/researching LGBT+ identities as a queer researcher. Five experiences are discussed: (i) the euphoria of connection, (ii) relationships with participants, (iii) retraumatisation through listening, (iv) finding oneself on the outside and (v) the researcher's shifting identity. The article concludes with suggestions on the impact studying one's own identity can have on the researcher, and suggestions for engaging in similar research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflexively discusses field access as a continuous process in linguistic ethnographic fieldwork and illustrates how interactions generated during negotiations to establish a research collaboration, initial contacts with participants or data gathered to complement audio-visual recordings of naturally occurring interaction can, in fact, become rich sources to answer research questions. The discussion is based on a critical sociolinguistic ethnography on the implementation of English-Spanish 'bilingual programs' in a mid-sized city in central Spain. To build this discussion we propose a framework in which particular research stances held by participants become closely intertwined with particular research processes, spaces and techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on emotion is fraught with methodological limitations, as feelings can have non-discrete, ephemeral, and ineffable qualities. Audio diaries offer a method for capturing the sequential and varied experience of emotions as they emerge from everyday life. Following theory and methodological development in the sociology of emotion, we examine how audio diaries might be used to capture (a) candid emotions that emerge spontaneously and may reflect unpopular or negative social views and experiences, (b) the self as unfinished, and (c) processes of emotional reflexivity that exist alongside the diverse emotions that infuse everyday life. We explore how waveform visualization of audio recordings might be meaningfully combined with qualitative analysis of transcribed data to illustrate emotional contours in situ. We draw on audio diaries collected from 48 nurses from two US hospital systems to explore the possibilities and limitations of using audio diaries in emotion research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As health advertising researchers we become involved with a variety of health and well-being issues in order to advance social marketing research. Health advertising research involves mainly face-to-face encounters with participants using qualitative methodologies. This article explores the challenges a researcher of British origin faced undertaking fieldwork in India in an effort to collect qualitative data about breast cancer awareness (BCA) and prevention, a culturally taboo subject. Key obstacles included cultural barriers, research method assumptions and researcher resilience. Reflexivity has been recognized as a crucial stage in the process of generating knowledge via qualitative research processes. Thereby applying the critical lens of reflexivity, this article reflects upon the complexities of accessing Indian women (a fiercely private demographic) to participate in discussions about the sensitive topic of breast cancer. The results are discussed and recommendations from this researcher's experience are presented as a resource to assist future qualitative health advertising inquiry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilising online data within qualitative research is becoming increasingly common, particularly as it offers a useful means for engaging with sensitive topics and accessing social actors in more 'naturalistic' settings. However, researching sensitive topics online can expose researchers to a range of emotional narratives, yet researcher emotion remains an area which is relatively underexplored in relation to online qualitative research. This article then reflects on the emotional implications of qualitative research online through the case study of online infertility research. Three themes are highlighted: what happened next?; empathy from afar, and emotional detachment and these reflect on how emotion can be manifest and utilised, and the strategies that can be adopted to facilitate the negotiation of researching emotive and sensitive topics in online settings. Drawing on Campbell's (2001) ideas, the article then sets out what the notion of what 'emotionally engaged online research' may look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We critically reflect on insights from our experiences as female researchers on a creative writing project in a men's prison, including the emotional impact on the men involved and the ways in which our role as participant researchers impacted deeply on us. Juxtaposed starkly with the physical constraints of the prison, a sense of journeys emerged as significant throughout the study, particularly the symbolic crossing of boundaries. We draw on theories of performativity from both Feminist and Symbolic Interactionist perspectives to frame our understanding of the experience of being participant researchers in prison creative writing workshops, and also consider associated ethical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how perceptions of interviewing elites influence the decisions made at every stage of the qualitative research process. It also reflects on issues of positionality and power which relate not only to the relationship between researcher and respondent but also to the subject matter of the research itself. As such I suggest that it is important to critically assess assumptions made about elites and to reflect on how the position of the researcher might impact upon the exchange and resultant findings. In essence what is found is that in discussing the construction of policy, a delicate balance is struck between positionality and research topic and that the policy narrative is a joint construction which is very much shaped by the identity and positionality of everyone involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article conceptualizes the collective method to describe how 12 scholars worked collaboratively to study the effects of displacement following Hurricane Katrina. The collective method is defined as an integrated, reflexive process of research design and implementation in which a diverse group of scholars studying a common phenomenon-yet working on independent projects-engage in repeated theoretical and methodological discussions to improve (1) research transparency and accountability and (2) the rigor and efficacy of each member's unique project. This process generates critical discussions over researchers' and respondents' positionality, the framework of intersectionality, and applied ethics. Informed by feminist theoretical and methodological considerations of reflexivity, insider-outsider positionality, power relations, and social justice, the collective method can enhance scholars' standpoints regarding philosophical, ethical, and strategic issues that emerge in the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We come to this article as non-Indigenous teacher educators working as qualitative researchers in postcolonial/decolonial (Mignolo, 2000) times. We explore matters related to schooling in remote Australian Indigenous communities. In this article, we respond to Delamont’s invitation for qualitative researchers to revisit (Delamont and Hamilton, 1984) and think reflexively (Delamont, 2009) about our field work research methods. In doing so, attention is drawn to research processes involved with observing, narrating and writing lives and experiences. We highlight matters related to sequencing dilemmas (Delamont, 2009), the need to locate the self-as-researcher in the social (Delamont, 2007), and calling out ethical tensions associated with the ‘catch 22’ of confidentiality and acknowledgement (Delamont, 2007). Two separate researcher recounts of field notes are used to render visible our reflexive thinking as we attempt to negotiate Western educational research ethics policies and procedures and ways of knowing and being in Indigenous contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waiting is one of the most common phenomena in ethnographic and other community-based research. Nevertheless, it remains under-explored in academic writing about the theoretical and methodological aspects of fieldwork. While waiting time often allows new data or information to emerge, we argue that such times have a significance independent of knowledge outcomes. We review various conceptions of waiting: as a time for self-awareness; the use of enforced waiting to exert power over the disadvantaged; and its obverse, the choice by the more powerful to ‘wait upon’ another’s needs and priorities. We use stories from our own fieldwork experience to suggest that in the particular context of ethnographic or community-based research, the choice to ‘wait upon’ others is a form of researcher reflexivity that can partially redress historical or current power imbalances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although existing notions of reflexivity address the positionality of researchers, they rarely consider the processes through which methods and methodologies can come about. This study builds children’s reflexivity into the research design. Drawing on footage from a pilot visual ethnography of paternal engagement in home environments, we show first, that at one level, building children’s reflexivity into data collection and analysis, allows us to look at the relationship between the child, technology and the subject of their images; thereby establishing a position from which their perspective is produced. We found that their age and the particular visual technology used, shaped how the children positioned themselves and in turn, the kind of representations we gathered. As this was a collaborative study with a film maker and also involving discussions of film findings with teachers; a more general level reflexive analysis allowed us generate different viewpoints from which their perspectives were produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of qualitative research means that the personal values of an individual researcher can and do (unwittingly) shape the way in which they analyse data sets, and the resultant conclusions drawn. However this phenomenon is under-studied in social research and this article seeks to help rectify this. This article presents findings from a small research project focused on discourses of class, masculinity and work among British male comedians from working-class backgrounds, interviewed on the popular BBC Radio 4 radio programme Desert Island Discs. Six different researchers, from varying disciplinary, methodological and theoretical groundings, as well as from varying personal backgrounds, analysed three interview recordings and transcripts separately. All the researchers wrote up their individual analyses of these interviews and wrote reflexive pieces examining why they thought they approached the data as they did. The researchers then came together as a group to compare and contrast findings and approaches. The results from this study, including the discrepancies and distinctions and final group analysis, are reported alongside a thorough discussion of the project’s methodology. We find that the project evidenced how a diverse research team can bring out deeper and richer analyses, and was a refreshing way to try and answer questions of individual and collective positionality [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experiential and analytical routes of the researchers-authors’ web-project titled ‘Making Home: Tai Hang’, which investigates Hong Kong home culture by accessing informants’ domestic world through different layers of interpretation via hypermedia presentation. The web-project’s [http://taihang.scm.cityu.edu.hk/#en] multilayered navigation structure—playful yet scholarly introduction, ‘tourlike’ yet distant ‘virtual’ field experiences, participants’ situated yet performative accounts of home lives, and the researchers-authors’ inductive categorizations—communicate multi-dimensional ethnographic accounts of home culture in Hong Kong. Employing media in isolation and in interaction (i.e. graphic illustrations, panorama photography, interaction of images and audio vignettes of participants’ narration and researcher-participant dialogues, and multiple micro-narratives on objects) via website’s hypermedia nature, we argue that hypermedia representation affords engaged and critical readings of ethnographic knowledge as situated and multivocal, interpretive and constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the creative methods deployed in the course of a research project aimed at mapping community-based mental health service provision and other specific services migrant, refugee and asylum seeking women regularly access in London. Although the study made use of a mixed method research design, only the art-based approach deployed as part of the focus groups is discussed. The article contributes to developing embodied research methods in that it explores the bodily engagement of research participants in making a collage and unpacks the implications of this approach for collecting qualitative data involving experiential activity. The body plays a central role in generating qualitative data through the making of the collage and collage-making represents an embodied experience suggesting that how we feel, how we perceive, how we relate to our own bodies and the place they have in the order of things – is contextual, gendered, relational, historically and culturally situated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Football supporters worldwide organise protests, petitions, campaigns, workshops and congresses and are engaged in political lobbying. These expressions of supporters’ activism are nourished by both discontent with developments in football culture and an effort to change them. The aim of this methodologically driven article is to critically examine the role of digital ethnographies in exploring these processes. To reflexively explore the complex realities of recent transformations in football culture, this research study complemented offline data with online data. The use of digital data is discussed along the following dimensions: informational, representational, epistemological and relational. It is argued that the analytical dualism employed to critically discuss the relationship between online and offline spheres should be complemented with empirical duality to fully understand the role played by the digital sphere in social reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an era of accelerated international mobility, migrant researchers are increasingly studying their migrant co-nationals in a language different from the language in which they report their findings. This raises very significant considerations regarding language experience and translation of research data. While crucial for understanding production of knowledge, these issues have not yet been given adequate attention. In response, this article focuses first on the challenges related to the assumed shared relationship with language between migrant researchers and their migrant informants. In doing so, it contributes to the discussion about positionality of a migrant researcher. Second, it recognizes the role of a translator researcher and discusses the implications of collecting data in one language and presenting the findings in another. As such, it addresses essential methodological queries many migrant researchers face when conducting studies involving their compatriot communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]