ABSTRACT
The chapter reflects on how fieldnotes have been positioned throughout my research training as conventional tools to analyze and make sense of the ‘Other,’ and to ensure a level of objectivity. My doctoral research examines issues of youth homelessness and educational access with young people who, like myself, have lived experience of housing insecurity. Here, I discuss navigating the abstracting work of “translating” intimate and deeply personal life experiences into academic discourse. Drawing on D.E. Smith’s Institutional Ethnographic approach, this chapter explores the position of the researcher as “embodied knower,” and how refusing to strive for objective distance can open research to those who have expertise about urgent social issues. In carving out space for researchers to control their own research narratives, fieldnotes become an integral site for illuminating and transparently tracing the construction of “researcher” identity.
