“Low-Key from the University”

Abstract

The authors, both early career scholars, explore how they navigate the insider/outsider paradox as bisexual+ researchers within postsecondary contexts. The chapter will discuss three interrelated ideas: (1) navigating the insider/outsider paradox given the author’s multiple identities, (2) how the authors negotiate their professional identities as bi+ women in academia, and (3) the impact of studying sexuality on their own queer identities. First, the authors acknowledge the importance of researcher positionality by describing how their social identities pushed them to investigate bisexual+ graduate students and shaped their research process. They then address their orientation toward research, which is informed by a critical poststructural epistemology and queer theoretical frameworks. The authors seek to disrupt the researcher/subject binary and enables researchers to work in community with participants who serve as co-researchers. By collaborating with their co-researchers to construct a (counter)narrative, the authors challenge hetero-, homo-, and mononormative conceptualizations of sexuality. Finally, to honor co-researchers’ stories, the authors acknowledge a need to continuously question what ethical sexuality research looks like. This has generated robust reflection, both independently and in community with one another. These reflections (research journal excerpts, author conversations, interview data) lay the foundation for this chapter.