ABSTRACT
This paper builds on discussions of diary research elsewhere in the volume by reflecting on the photo-elicitation as a method of diarying everyday lives in higher education contexts. By reflecting on the ‘diarying’ aspects of the method, the chapter draws out how ‘participant generated photo-elicitation’ offers insight and access to deep, diverse and unexpected narratives of experience – reflecting, but also adding to the potential benefits of diary research. The paper draws this out with reference to the existing literature before focusing on the presence of diarying in trans- and bi-identifying undergraduate students’ use of photo-elicitation to document and reflect upon their everyday lives in higher education. The chapter argues that the diarying aspects of photo-elicitation (identified as presenting the everyday and interpreting experiences) offer a unique combination of distance and intimacy between participant and experience, which is made possible through the incorporation of photography in order to encourage a telling of life which is distinct, insightful, and of clear benefit to higher education research. The chapter uses examples which engage with the idea of the unexpected to argue that the co-existence of distance and intimacy emerges due to the dual role that participants in photo-elicitation studies have as creators and interpreters of the visual images with which they diary their lives.
