Reflexive Research Research Articles

Dear Kathleen: An Immersed Reflexive Inquiry of Sex Work, Sexual Violence, and College Students

ABSTRACTWithin scholarship and public discourse, the concepts sex work and sexual violence are often conflated. More specifically, sex work is specifically framed as sexual violence that relies on a prevalent oppression paradigm analytic with respect to erotic labor(ers). This necessarily impacts research and scholarship on sex workers, and it informs the experiences of college students engaged in sex work. Situated as an immersed reflexive inquiry, we analyze the bounds of sex work, sexual violence, and what, if any, nexus exists between them through our personal, professional, and academic experiences in tandem with an artifact (a reflexive letter) written by a college student sex work to her past self. We interrogate implications and offer a clear perspective on whether sex work is sexual violence and why it matters.

Intra-acting with the self: diffracting reflexivity in action-based research

ABSTRACT Action research methodologies are dynamic, as they often evolve with a group and are shaped by multiple contributions that can change over time. As researchers are embedded within this process, reflexivity is paramount to remain attuned to how they move with and shape the research. In search of a dynamic way of engaging with reflexivity in action research, this paper explores intra-active and diffractive theory and considers how diffracting reflexivities (Serra Undurraga 2021) can help researchers grasp a deeper understanding of their role in shaping the research process. This paper draws from a doctoral researcher’s experience navigating their reflexivity within an action research project to design sexuality education materials with young people in Aruba. Through its documentation of three multi-modal apparatuses, including doodling, audio/written journaling and blackout poetry, it offers a snapshot into creative methods for reflexivity and maps how their intra-actions go on to shape research practice. This paper contributes to the literature by providing insight into the ‘doing’ of reflexivity. It concludes that thinking with a diffractive lens and remaining curious to intra-actions are valuable tools for building a dynamic personal practice that compliments the emergent nature of action research methodologies.

Critical Reflexivity of the Researcher as an Exploratory Vehicle in Sensitive Research

Qualitative research requires in-depth immersion in the topic of concern for the findings to be valid and pertinent. However, in doing so, qualitative researchers may encounter certain challenges that address beyond the methodological concern. There is limited research that explores the impact on researchers who undertake research on sensitive or challenging research and marginalized groups. Considering that the researcher is the central figure who influences the research project across all steps from conceptualization to action, researcher reflexivity can be used as a strategy to look behind the curtain of the research project. Through practicing critical reflexive experiential analysis, I reflect on my journey on conducting research on the topic of sexual violence. I address the silence of researcher vulnerability by documenting and analyzing my emotional journey through each stage of the research project in my reflexive journal and how I resolved each dilemma at both personal and professional levels. The aim of this article is, therefore, to highlight the process of critical reflexivity of my journey as a sexual violence researcher in Indian context.

Who cares about academic welfare in empirical data collection? Exploring the deficit in personal and psychological care for researchers in research ethics processes

ABSTRACT Ethics applications in academic research rarely account for the personal care and wellbeing of the researchers who undertake research. This paper reflects on the practice of carrying out research where the experiences of the participant and reflections of the researcher themselves are closely aligned. Such instances encourage the revisiting of difficult, troubling, and sometimes traumatic periods of the researchers’ personal life history. This article reflects on research conducted during a doctoral thesis which uses qualitative methods to understand the experiences of thirteen working-class professional services and administrative staff. I suggest that this type of personal reflection is involuntary, it is not actively pursued yet becomes inseparable from the conduct of research. Echoing the work of Brown and Wild ([2022]. Ethical Dilemmas in Education: Considering Challenges and Risks in Practice. Open University Press) this paper calls for additional support mechanisms to be implemented for researchers who conduct this sort of involuntary reflexivity in qualitative research, making suggestions for practical solutions within UK institutions.

Motivation, self-determination, and reflexivity of researchers in comedic public engagement.

Understanding motivation and impact of participation in public engagement programs is crucial for fostering dialogue between researchers and the public. Using Self-Determination Theory and Reflexive Thematic Analysis, in this study we analyzed motivation and impact on identity of researchers participating in Bright Club Ireland, a public engagement project where academic researchers learn to use stand-up comedy as an informal and accessible means of communicating their research, then perform at a public-facing variety night alongside professional comedians. Through semi-structured interviews and focus groups, we found that participation in Bright Club is largely intrinsically motivated, driven by researchers' desire to gain skills, be recognized as experts, and present their own perspectives on their disciplines. These findings shed light on how participation in public engagement can promote a sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness among researchers, and highlight the role of creative expression in facilitating reflection and growth.

Navigating Ethical Tensions Through Critical Reflexivity: A Participatory Filmmaking Research Project With Children With Disabilities

This paper illustrates the importance of critical reflexivity in guiding socially and ethically responsible participatory research through an analysis of reflexive notes pertaining to the process of a participatory filmmaking research project with children with disabilities. Within this process, numerous ethical tensions emerged in the field regarding the participation of children with disabilities, authenticity of stories shared, navigating facilitator’s voice, issues of representation of child co-researchers, safety and risks associated with sharing everyday realities within the film, and limits to immediate action. The practice of individual and shared critical reflexivity among researchers, and inclusivity of child co-researchers, was central in navigating ethical tensions. This paper makes transparent the process of critical reflexivity within a participatory action research project by highlighting the ethical tensions faced, contextualizing them within cultural practices and power relations, and sharing strategies used to address ‘ethics in practice.’ We end by proposing practical strategies to enhance reflexive research practices in participatory work.

The university within, of and for the city: reflections on the entanglement of academic practice and the local

ABSTRACT Historically, universities have become defining elements in many (European) cities. Cities such as Oxford or Berkeley are publicly known because they are home to globally renowned academic institutions, which are considered ‘brands’ of the city. In this reflexive essay, I approach the university-city entanglement beyond the apparent role of academic institutions as economic and marketing factors for cities. Particularly, I reflect on the normative and scientific-practical implications of doing research ‘within’ a certain local. How may this positionality affect research practice, when academic work is conceived as property of the local? How can researchers reflexively engage with the local and maybe even contribute to solving local and global challenges? Rather than providing conclusive answers to these questions, this piece aims to stir up a debate among local government and governance scholars. I conclude that the ‘local’ of academic practice deserves far more attention as a category of reflexive research.

Not me-search, you-search: Ethical considerations for research involving marginalized outgroups

ABSTRACT Background:This study explored experiences of quantitative researchers who work with marginalized populations. Methods/materials: Participants were recruited from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology forum, and asked questions regarding their struggles and best practices while working with marginalized populations in which they are or are not a member. Results: Responses included concerns regarding bidirectional trust, community norms, perceived bias, diversity and participant recruitment and compensation. We explore the benefits of qualitative understandings of bias (i.e. positionality, reflexivity), salient concerns reported by quantitative researchers, and our recommendations for the ethical inclusion of these practices across quantitative work. Conclusions: This paper contributes to understanding of current struggles and best practices while conducting research among marginalized populations. Additionally, we encourage quantitative researchers to engage in reflexive research practices, particularly for the benefit of marginalized group research. We extend the insider-outsider researcher discussion to quantitative researchers.

‘Out of the “basement”’: exploring positionality and reflexivity in EU migration law research

ABSTRACT This article questions the absence of clear reflexivity and positionality in EU migration law research and it explores how they could be integrated through the real-life example of its author. While they are not usually part of the methodological tools of researchers in EU migration law, this article intends to show that they might be crucial to better understand its underlying processes. As EU migration law has a major influence on the lives of both migrants and those who research it, reflexivity and positionality could be a way for a dialogue to be acknowledged between them as part of the research itself. This article is presented as an ‘exploration’ rather than a theoretical contribution strictly following regular academic structures. As such, it is mostly articulated as a narrative using extended metaphors to convey the entanglement between the state of mind of the researcher and the evolution of her research process.

Navigating pregnancy and scholarship: Exploring positionality, reflexivity, and intersectionality in research

The paper highlights the crucial role of positionality and reflexivity in understanding knowledge creation and research processes, drawing on my experience as a pregnant woman conducting semi-structured interviews with policy elites. Previous literature has acknowledged the impact of appearance and gender on the research process. By employing an adapted self-presentation technique during the interviews, observable effects on the research process were noted. This paper shares my observations as a researcher before and after disclosing my pregnancy. Participant reactions revealed clashes in expectations, worldviews, and meanings within the interviews’ initial moments. The positive experience demonstrated that pregnancy facilitated access to policy elites, recruitment of additional interviewees, and initiated meaningful dialogues, shedding light on the role of positionality and reflexivity in fieldwork. My open vulnerability, transparency in disclosing personal information, and accessibility enhanced participant reciprocity and diminished perceived threats, fostering engaging and profound conversations. These findings underscore how the distinctive attributes of the pregnant body—consciousness, vulnerability, power, and fluidity—significantly influence key methodological aspects, shaping the epistemological process of knowledge creation.

How Did Bengal Become a Society?

AbstractStarting in the nineteenth century, ‘society’ emerged as a new object of contemplation, a new conception of historicity, and a new framework of norms in Bengal. This article asks what kind of epistemological project this turn to the social represented, and what its emergence suggests about the historical circumstances that underwrote its conditions of possibility. I suggest that, beyond the narrower framework of colonial knowledge, the social emerged as a reflexive inquiry into the ways in which the conditions of collective and individual life were being transformed by practices of interdependence that defied containment to regional geographies.

Embracing the Kahankar and the Ahankar: A Reflexive Inquiry into Body, Movement, and Consciousness, Interwoven with the Warli Philosophy

Embracing the Kahankar and the Ahankar: A Reflexive Inquiry into Body, Movement, and Consciousness, Interwoven with the Warli Philosophy

Reflective and reflexive research participants: Growing the scope for engaging the expertise of frontline workers for policy change

A key value of reflexive research is the constant attentiveness to the forces that produce the way we think about the world. Yet, the researcher constantly grapples with the risk of making him or herself too central to the research. In this article I argue that the risk of researcher-centred research can be mitigated while enhancing the benefits of reflexive practice by incorporating the methodological practice of reflexivity on the part of research participants. This research develops a theoretical argument for a research design that values the expertise of frontline workers understood as whole and complex people rather than simply as agents of the state. I demonstrate that putting their expertise into a reflexive methodological framework can realise effective policy, institutional and systemic change.

Staring out my window: Reflexivity and relationality in research in a Covid-19 world

In March 2020 I faced a research crisis. Like many PhD students, my project quickly fell apart and I was faced with writing a PhD on migration while stood still in London. In this article I explore the techniques I used to try to write about movement through conscious stasis and what this can tell us about the nature of fieldwork. I explore my attempts to answer these problems through experiments in autoethnography and communal storytelling. Both of these methods were attempts on my behalf to think through what it means to do ethical research in the face of a climate crisis and a pandemic. As such, I explore the ways in which using them changed my thinking not only about my project, but about the nature of research itself. I argue that moments of rupture such as COVID shine a light on the structuring of ‘normality’ in research. I write against a return to that normal. A normal that has justified extensive international travel in the face of a deepening ecological crisis, a normal that celebrated knowledge extraction and created material realities which governed ‘who’ the researcher could be.

Reflexivity in research: addressing power dynamics in researching Syrian refugees in the UK

ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates the role of reflexivity in identifying and mitigating challenges to research methods while researching a community of Arabic-speaking refugees in the UK. Through reflexive accounts, the paper details how the research project was designed and conducted. The paper argues that through multidimensional reflexivity, researchers can identify power asymmetries and their implications for the research process. Particularly, the paper focuses on accommodating for the researched community’s particular vulnerabilities and linguistic needs. By evaluating the power dynamics in this research context, the paper highlights the role of reflexivity in maintaining a sensitive, transparent, and relevant research practice.

Language education for migrant/refugee inmates inside two prisons in Greece: a nexus analysis research

ABSTRACT The article discusses the challenges and methodological choices undertaken within a research project on language education in two prison schools in Greece with migrant multilingual student inmates, aged 18–22 years old. The 2.5 years of research adopted Nexus Analysis as a methodology and an interpretive framework. Throughout prolonged engagement of the research with the field, data were generated via inclusive, collaborative and reflexive research practices and research interventions for and with inmate participants. Through recontextualization of research practices and pedagogies, the research is considered as a form of resistance to the monolingual and monocultural discourses which dominate in the superdiverse prison context.

A social identity perspective on language and researchers’ cultural identities in qualitative interviews in multinational corporations

PurposeThis study aims to advance knowledge in international management research about how researchers’ cultural identity in fieldwork encounters may be grounded in the choice of language in multicultural and multilingual projects.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on critical reflections on the experience of two co-authors as Chinese nationals conducting research in overseas Chinese multinational corporations (MNCs) in developing economies.FindingsDrawing on social identity theory, the authors demonstrate that the cultural identity and cultural insider/outsider positionality of both the researcher and research participants can be shaped by language, translation and other artefacts in cross-cultural interviews, constantly being shifted, managed and renegotiated during qualitative interviewing. This study highlights the politics of language which, when combined with other forms of power relations, such as the researcher’s perceived status, economic development of the MNCs’ home country and the participants’ organisational hierarchy, affect power distribution between the researcher and participants. Researchers often need to move from being an “insider” to an “outsider” and often to an “in-betweener” at different stages in an interview interaction to balance power.Originality/valueThis study contributes to international debates about the complex interplay of languages, politics and identity in multilingual and multicultural qualitative research. In contributing to these literatures, the authors focus on the relatively under-researched Chinese MNCs in other developing countries including Mongolia and Tanzania. Recommendations for researcher training and reflexivity are proposed.

Violences of/in critical terrorism studies

ABSTRACT This article makes a case that CTS scholarship is always, necessarily, and specifically paradigmatically violent, even if one adopts CTS’ critiques of “mainstream” terrorism studies and understands CTS scholars to be normatively well-intended. In making that case, this article goes over different violences of CTS scholarship which have important impacts in the field and in the “real world” from which the field often distinguishes itself: the (often unreflected) reification of “terrorism” discourses, the (often uncritical) engagement with P/CVE initiatives, the construction and perpetuation of gendered and racialised ideas of agency in “terrorism” and “counterterrorism,” and the complex publication and citations practices in the field. The article then argues that the effects of these violences are made more intense by the violences involved with research reflexivity in the field, and even in this article. It concludes by discussing possible futures for a CTS, which acknowledges its own violences and looks to understand and even possibly redirect them.

Enhancing nurse practitioner research through reflexivity.

This article highlights the essential role of reflexivity in research, using a qualitative project involving interviews with nurse practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic as an example. It discusses the potential biases inherent in research, particularly when the researcher's experiences closely align with those of the participants. Drawing on the perspective of a nurse practitioner engaged in both research and health care provision, this article explores the importance of reflexivity in addressing these biases. Examining the lead author's experiences conducting interviews with fellow nurse practitioners, the article illustrates how reflexivity was used, particularly in data collection and analysis, to enhance transparency and minimize subjectivity. By advocating for the integration of reflexivity in qualitative research, this article emphasizes the significance of shared experiences between nurse practitioner researchers and participants in reducing biases and improving research outcomes. It demonstrates how reflexivity contributes to a more authentic and comprehensive methodology, especially when researchers share similar experiences with participants. Furthermore, this article offers practical suggestions to assist nurse practitioners in enhancing reflexivity throughout the research process, thereby contributing to ongoing discussion and strategy development in the field.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? How corporations maintain hegemony by using counterinsurgency tactics to undermine activism

This article contributes to critical theory building in relation to political corporate social responsibility (PCSR) by conceptualizing the underlying processes and practices through which corporations seek to counter threats posed by activist groups. We argue that the problematic nature of PCSR is entangled not only in its state-like aims, but also in its covert deployment of military tactics towards the maintenance of corporate hegemony. We illuminate how corporations use counterinsurgency tactics to undermine the ability of activists to hold them accountable for their wrongdoing. Building on the work of Gramsci, we propose that counterinsurgency tactics combine elements of force and persuasion that enable corporations to maintain hegemony (i.e., secure consent over time). We ask: How are counterinsurgency tactics used by corporations to neutralize activist pressures and maintain corporate hegemony? We draw upon historical sources regarding the Nestlé infant milk boycott case to undertake a genealogical analysis that exposes counterinsurgency tactics enabling corporations to counter activists and sustain their hegemony. We find that Nestlé deployed four key counterinsurgency tactics to nullify activist pressures (suppressing external support, isolating the activist(s), capturing the dialogue, and covert intelligence gathering). From our analysis, we propose the term corporate counterinsurgency and theorize the historic use of corporate counterinsurgency tactics as an example of a hegemonic strategy that enables corporations to covertly undermine activist pressures. We conclude by calling for further reflexivity in organizational studies research on the military origins of PCSR, and by outlining how activist organizations might mobilize against corporate counterinsurgency tactics.