ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ways that feminist geographers are conceptualizing intimacy and the implications of these conceptualizations on research. It develops a working definition of intimacy, drawing on the work by feminists across geographies. The chapter examines some of methodological challenges feminist geographers face when dealing with intimacy in research, including issues about reflexivity, positionality, belonging and that which goes unsaid. It addresses the issues that arise from the decision to include one's own story in research, whether as an inquiry into the form of presentation or as part of the context within which one works as an academic. The chapters shows a range of topical aspects of intimacy that researchers explore, as a practice-oriented objective, as a research practice, as an affective research process and as nonhuman emotion. In the fourth section authors take up intimacy analytically through five different research methods: witnessing, recording field notes, reading archival material, writing autobiographically and authoring creative non-fiction.
