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

ABSTRACT

The 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Researcher identity
• elite education
• men and masculinities
• reflexivity
• research access
• the researcher–researched relationship
• health and physical education
• critical ethnography

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Rachel Ann O’Brien http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1195-4937

Notes

1 Pseudonym used to protect anonymity of the school.

2 Each year at Kingston College, a student leadership team is appointed. They are given the opportunity to develop a school motto for their year of leadership that will inform their goals and focus as leaders. During the year I conducted research at the College, the student leaders had developed the motto, ‘Value you, Support Him, Stand with Her’.

3 ‘Sandstone’ university refers to a group of six universities in Australia that were founded before World War One. These universities are considered most prestigious in the historically determined hierarchy (Marginson, 1999).

4 Pseudonyms are used to protect the anonymity of research participants and the school in which the research took place.