The illegible and illiterate researcher in Honduras: Research in a transnational setting as a queer from the Global North

Abstract

In this article, I examine an ongoing qualitative and ethnographic research project in a transnational, multilingual setting. I am not primarily a queer scholar, nor do I study queer issues, gender, or sexuality, as a primary focus in my research agenda or career. However, I am the primary research instrument in these projects, and I am also a person whose language, gender, and sexuality are at times, legible, while also to varying degrees, indecipherable to those around me. Some research projects are in the Central American country of Honduras, and as an academic from the Global North, there are many situations in which I was unable to settings and individuals while in the field. I use narrative inquiry to share and assess this illegibility, both on my part and on the part of people I met in the field. The data set includes fifteen years of living and traveling to Honduras to teach and to conduct research; however, it has never specifically been in LGBTI spaces or with LGBTI communities. Regardless, at the end of each day, my fieldnotes are filled with insight gleaned from my presence as a queer person and interactions within LGBTI communities. This article, and the larger research project in general, came to light because of the ways language, gender, and sexuality—specifically my own language, gender, and sexuality—challenged me in this transnational qualitative research setting.

Keywords:

• Qualitative research
• ethnographic methods
• primary instrument
• researcher positionality
• gender
• queer
• educational research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate E. Kedley

Kate E. Kedley is an assistant professor of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Education at Rowan University in New Jersey, and teaches literacy methods courses. Kedley’s research focuses on critical pedagogy, community engaged research, LGBTQ literature in 5-12 classrooms, education in Central America, and teacher activism.