The body-space relations of research(ed) on bodies: the experiences of becoming participant researchers

Abstract

This paper heeds calls for reflections on how the research field is defined through embodied socio-spatial presence and immediacy. Focusing on classroom ‘body-training’ observations which were part of a larger qualitative research project, and the field notes and reflections of three researchers, we explore the transition from observer-researchers to participant researchers. That is, we explore how, by researching others’, we unexpectedly became researched on as our own bodies became instruments in the research process and were used to elicit knowledge on embodied learning, body-mapping and corporeal trace. As a methodological intervention, conducting research through the body, the positioning of bodies and body-to-body interaction, can tell us much about the often ignored embodied and emotional dimensions of the research field. But, in addition, it can elucidate the power relations between, and the fluidity of, researcher and researched positions in the jolting of secured researcher identity. Here we detail how different researchers performed different embodied and emotional subjectivities in different training-research spaces. We explore how ontological anxieties of our own placed bodies, based around constructed notions of femininity, religion, and researcher professionalism, shape this immediate body-to-body encounter and the subsequent research process.