ABSTRACT
The idea that infant participation in research is achievable by researchers ‘voicing’ infants’
experiences and ‘perspectives’ is a central feature of current moves towards participatory
research. In this article we offer an alternative. Specifically, we suggest a different point of
reference than infants’ own experiences and ‘perspectives’; namely, the encounter between
researcher and infant as it unfolds in practice. Drawing from a large-scale study of infants in
family day care, and Merleau-Ponty’s notions of e´cart and reversibility, we articulate the
possibility that infants’ participation in research encounters may be felt by researchers in the
ways that infants evoke embodied responses. Drawing on Dillon’s ethics of particularity,
which builds upon e´cart and reversibility, we discuss the idea that researchers’ embodied
responses to infants provoke possibilities for ethical reflection, which can afford new ways of
‘going on’. We propose that space may be created for infants to influence ECEC practice
when researchers attend to their own embodied responses to infants during the research
encounter; and to the factors that may diminish infants’ capacities to affect such responses.
