Perspectives on Cultivating a Qualitative Researcher's Identity

This chapter problematizes the notion of methodological rigor in qualitative research through an examination of what it means to cultivate an identity as a qualitative researcher. Through a string of narratives, each author explores texts, methods, and experiences that inspired their work as qualitative researchers and fostered their scholarly identities. Themes of writing about the self as researcher, reflexive inquiry to develop a researcher identity, writing as a tool to hone one's understanding, and the role of trauma in qualitative research are discussed.

Writer Identity Construction in MSc. Students of Engineering

Writing in academia is not only a way for students to acquire knowledge and skills, but also a process through which they construct author/researcher identity. This study aims to explore how twenty MSc. students construct their identity as writers of research papers. The students in this study received genre-based writing instructions on writing research papers during their writing course in the first semester of university. They wrote four papers during the semester, and the researcher provided feedback to their papers. Then, they were interviewed individually in order to find out how they reacted to the instructions, the writing process, and the feedback provided by the teacher. In addition, they were requested to write a reflective piece of writing about what they experienced including their emotions, thoughts and opinions about writing an academic paper before and after the course. Two types of analyses were made. Firstly, their sample research papers were examined during the course to see if there were improvements in the areas where feedback was provided. Secondly, the interviews and reflective pieces of writing were subjected to content analysis in order to extract themes. The examination of the papers revealed that the feedback provided by the teacher was effective as the writings improved in the areas where feedback was given. The thematic analysis resulted in two major themes of Affect and Attitude and the Need for Adaptation. An important implication of this study was the role feedback played in helping student/researchers to develop their identity in writing.

A Probe Into Chinese Doctoral Students’ Researcher Identity: A Volunteer-Employed Photography Study

Researcher identity has been widely studied as central to doctoral education. However, little is known about students’ emic conceptualization of what represents researcher identity based on their lived experience. Using a sample of 24 Chinese doctoral students in Australia, this study adopts volunteer-employed photography (VEP) to facilitate the participants’ delineation of their researcher identity. Findings reveal that researcher identity is indexed at three levels: belonging as being, doing as becoming, and limited limitlessness. It presents itself as a complex formulating process in which dichotomous, yet mutually constitutive, forces collide and merge. This study concretizes perceptions about the notion of researcher identity through photographs and corresponding revelatory dialogues in relation to people, objects, feelings, phenomena, and relationships. Some insights on visual research methodology are also discussed.

Diverse teams researching diversity: Negotiating identity, place and embodiment in qualitative research

Fieldwork encounters are not only contingent to biographical subjectivities, but are mediated by a confluence of identity, place and embodiment. This paper offers reflexive accounts of researchers with various socio-cultural and disciplinary backgrounds, who collaborated as a team to examine the varied funerary experiences and needs of established minorities and recent migrants in England and Wales. Focusing on the researchers’ varied personal experiences with death and bereavement and on their performances of minority and majority ethnic and migrant identities, the paper highlights the mediated and embodied nature of fieldwork. It argues that reflection on the various aspects of intersectional researcher identity is necessary for a rigorous fieldwork practice that takes transparency and politics into account. This facilitates a deeper understanding of the positionality of both researchers and interlocutors, and the situated co-production of knowledge. In doing so, the paper illustrates that conducting research with a diverse team of researchers contributes to better understanding the complexity and multifacetedness of social phenomena.

Academic Orientation Programme 2021. Researcher Visibility & Sharing our work beyond the University

<p>This presentation introduces academics and researchers to the value of formal and informal technologies in promoting the visibility and discoverability of their online researcher identity. Topics covered in the presentation include Open Access, Creative Commons licensing, Institutional Repositories, Research Data Management, ORCID, Research Collaboration & Social Scholarship, Researcher impact &citation analysis, Social Media, and Altmetrics.</p>