ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I examine the importance of positionality and the specific ethical dilemmas that emerge when a researcher is close to the studied group and also a practitioner in the field. I also highlight how the antagonism between faculty and ethics committee can influence the engagement with ethics throughout the research process. The original research project involved interviewing “sponsored women” on their experiences of domestic and family violence and their interactions with the department of immigration. Through the longitudinal research, I aimed to capture information on violence and mental health as the immigration process progressed. While most of the early efforts in this research project were put towards the “expected” points to be addressed in an ethics application process, the antagonism between faculty and the ethics committee tended to interfere with the ethics reflexivity throughout. In the current chapter, I identify the importance of ethics committee approval that, while flawed and incomplete, can sometimes assist with the negotiation of space for non-traditional research in more traditional research departments. Finally, I demonstrate the practitioner–researcher positionality can generate anxiety but can also offer responses to ethical dilemmas that often remain unexamined in these same traditional research institutions.
