Project
Becomings
engage · learn · reimagine · grow
Reimagining recovery narratives following adversity
Researching From the Inside–Outside
Exploring the tensions of being both survivor and researcher — at once inside and differently positioned within the research.
Neither Simply Inside Nor Outside
I entered Project Becomings with lived experience of childhood trauma, but also as the researcher responsible for conducting the study. These positions could not be neatly separated.
My lived experience meant that I was not entirely outside the worlds being explored. Some conversations, emotions and experiences resonated with my own history. At times, there could be a sense of recognition or connection that came from occupying overlapping experiential ground.
Yet shared experience did not make me an uncomplicated ‘insider’. I did not share the same experiences as the co-researchers, and I could not assume that my understanding of trauma or recovery was theirs. I was also differently positioned through my role as a researcher, my relationship with the university and the responsibilities and forms of authority that accompanied that position.
I therefore occupied a shifting inside–outside position. At different moments I could feel closer to, further from, or differently situated within the experiences and relationships unfolding through the research.
Rather than trying to resolve this tension by choosing whether I was an insider or an outsider, I became interested in what this shifting position did within the research: what it enabled me to notice, what relationships it made possible, what assumptions it might produce, and what responsibilities came with it.
Being a researcher-survivor therefore did not provide privileged access to a single survivor perspective. Instead, it required continued attention to where I was positioned, how that position was changing and how it shaped what could become known.
When The Research Resonated Personally
Occupying an inside–outside position meant that research encounters did not always remain at an intellectual distance from my own experiences.
Conversations, creative practices and moments within the research could resonate with aspects of my own history. Sometimes this created a sense of recognition or connection; at other times it could provoke emotional, bodily or affective responses that I had not anticipated.
These moments raised important questions about what it meant to remain present as a researcher while also being personally affected by the research. My responses could not simply be treated as irrelevant interference to be removed, but neither could I assume that what I felt provided an explanation for what a co-researcher was experiencing.
Reflexivity therefore involved paying attention to these moments: noticing when something resonated, questioning what I might be bringing into an encounter, and considering how my own histories and assumptions might be shaping what I noticed, asked or interpreted.
At times, shared experiential ground could make particular conversations possible. But recognition also carried risk. Feeling that I understood something was not the same as knowing another person's experience. Similarity could potentially obscure difference just as easily as it could create connection.
My emotional and embodied responses therefore became something to think with, rather than evidence about somebody else. They could prompt questions, expose assumptions and make aspects of the research encounter more perceptible, while still requiring careful consideration of where my experience ended and another person's began.
What I Chose To Make Visible
Being a researcher-survivor did not mean that all aspects of my lived experience automatically became part of the research.
I continually made choices about what parts of myself became visible, what remained private and when my own experience was relevant to an encounter. These decisions were not always straightforward. Remaining entirely silent about my lived experience could reproduce a familiar research relationship in which participants were asked to make themselves vulnerable while the researcher remained comparatively unknown.
Yet disclosure was not automatically reciprocal simply because something personal was shared. My experiences could occupy space, influence a conversation or shift attention away from a co-researcher. What I chose to make visible therefore needed to be considered in relation to why I was sharing, for whom, and what that disclosure might do within the encounter.
There were also parts of myself that I could choose to reveal and others that were already present. My body, emotional responses, ways of relating and reactions within the research could communicate something about me even when I had not deliberately put it into words.
The boundary between the ‘researcher’ and the ‘personal’ was therefore not a fixed line that could simply be maintained. Instead, it required ongoing decisions about presence, privacy, vulnerability and responsibility.
Importantly, retaining privacy was not incompatible with participatory or reciprocal research. Reciprocity did not require me to disclose everything about myself any more than participation required co-researchers to disclose everything about themselves.
Holding the Dual Position
The tension between being a researcher and being a survivor was not something that could be neatly resolved.
At different moments, these positions could move closer together or further apart. My lived experience could create recognition and connection, while my researcher role brought different forms of authority, responsibility and accountability. Neither position disappeared when the other became more visible.
This meant resisting the idea that I could become a completely detached researcher, but also resisting the assumption that shared survivor experience placed me in the same position as the co-researchers.
Instead, the dual position required me to remain attentive to movement between proximity and distance, connection and difference, participation and responsibility.
Reflexivity became important not as a way of removing myself from the production of knowledge, but as a way of continually questioning my involvement within it.
What was I noticing because of my own experiences? What might I be overlooking? When was experiential recognition useful? When might it be producing assumptions? And how was my position affecting what became possible within a particular encounter?
Holding the inside–outside position therefore meant accepting that my researcher-survivor identity could be productive, uncomfortable and ethically complicated at the same time. Its value did not lie in resolving those tensions, but in remaining accountable to them.