Researchers' Positionalities and Experiences Mediating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans-identified and Queer Research as a Personal and Cultural Practice

Abstract

In presenting an example of reflexive autoethnographic research, this paper investigates researchers’ positionalities and how researchers mediate LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified and queer) research as a situated research practice. It uses narratives of four co-researchers’ identity positions and experiences to explore each researcher’s self-reflexive personal, which is a term we use to name our engagement with issues of presence, place, acting, trust, rapport, authority and authenticity in the narrative-inquiry process. In taking up Rosaldo’s (1989; 1993) theme the researcher as the researched, the paper challenges researchers to scrutinize contexts, relationships, dispositions, constructs and affiliations that limit research to the parameters of heteronormative assumptions. Here the paper examines issues of researcher legitimacy in relation to researchers’ identity positions, experiences and relationships, and the social responsibility of researchers in relation to situated LGBTQ research. As well, the paper considers the political and professional ramifications of challenges, possibilities and risks associated with mediating LGBTQ research in the intersection of the personal and the cultural.