Living the Research: Ethics, Possibilities, and the Messiness of Deeply Personal Research Methods

Speaker(s):

Linjin Man, University of Birmingham

Abstract:

Building on stage one wonderings, this kitchen table session dialogues on lived research experiences of possibilities and messiness that arise when researchers are deeply and personally involved in their work. We will not aim to give structural guidance but instead embrace flexibilities from multiple perspectives across traditions such as heuristic inquiry, feminist research, and autoethnography. Contributors will begin by sharing short stories and challenges of how personal insights have emerged — through fieldwork, reflection, or everyday encounters — and how they were documented, evaluated, and incorporated into research. We will then invite participants to reflect on their own practice: imagining how their research might look if approached with either more personal involvement or more detachment, and considering what new possibilities or risks this shift could create. Together we will exchange practices, strategies, and perspectives — even from non-personal methods — to elicit nuanced insights and to navigate the messiness of deeply personal research.