Gatekeeper Politics and Urban Planning Research in the Contested Space of an Emerging Settlement: Reflection on Experiences in Hopley Farm Settlement, Harare

Urban planning research usually requires researchers to undertake fieldwork. This fieldwork is frustrated or enabled by gatekeepers who can influence effective data collection. Traditionally, gatekeepers are perceived as monolithic, neutral, and static individuals, yet they are complex individuals with varying needs and expectations from the researchers. For novice researchers, especially postgraduate students, dealing with and handling gatekeepers may be a mammoth task. This study focuses on gatekeepers inherent in contested spaces and uses a reflective approach to analyze the gatekeeper politics characteristic of informal settlements as contested spaces. Informed by literature and the author's personal experiences, this study argues that gatekeepers are complex figures shaped by the socio-political context and ultimately influence the research process. This calls for researchers to effectively strategize before, during, and after data collection to avoid compromising ethical issues and digressing from the scope of the study.