‘Who’s that girl sitting with the boys?’: negotiating researcher identity in fieldwork with adolescent boys

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to discuss the negotiation and performance of researcher identities while conducting fieldwork. It draws on a larger study of masculinities, health and physical education, and sport in an elite boys’ school to analyse the researcher’s role as a female ethnographer in the world of health and physical education in boys’ schooling. Using data drawn from field notes, reflections, and observations from six months of fieldwork at the school, this paper joins a growing body of research, which attests to the importance of making known the ‘hidden histories’ of qualitative research. The significance of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it lies in recognising the details of how researchers position themselves in the field, negotiate and renegotiate their identities, and the significance of social dynamics and relationships to this process. Secondly, it raises awareness of the implications of negotiating researcher identities and embodied experiences in the field and suggests this analysis should become more public in qualitative research.