Making meanings out of me : reading researcher's and participants' bodies through poetry

Humphrey, Harvey (2023) Making meanings out of me : reading researcher's and participants' bodies through poetry. Open Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2 (2). pp. 70-89. ISSN 2752-4116 (https://doi.org/10.56230/osotl.58)

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Abstract

This article offers autoethnographic reflections on the experience of qualitative research that account for the embodied subjectivity of interviewing as a research practice and the embodied practice of research outside of a traditional ‘field’. The article reflects on the ways in which the author was underprepared for the shifting power relations and shared vulnerabilities within research interactions to be experienced in an embodied way. This article then reflects on the process of experiencing research in the body during the writing-up process. The article draws on data collection experiences and fieldwork notes from a research project on trans and intersex activist relationships undertaken by a trans researcher with a history of LGBTI+ and trans activism. Furthermore, this research project was undertaken by a disabled scholar who had to negotiate a complex web of access needs and decisions over in/visibilising disabilities in order to complete the research.