Caroline Tagg

In this talk, I explore the importance of researcher reflexivity by drawing on vignettes written by members of a large multidisciplinary AHRC-funded project exploring multilingualism as a positive resource across a number of cities in the UK.  The team comprised a core group of linguists and other scholars at various stages of their career trajectories who bring to the research a range of language, cultural and academic backgrounds.  The talk focuses on a series of vignettes reflecting team members’ interpretation of their experience of ‘entering the field’ and the process of conducting ethnographic fieldwork.  The analysis sheds light on how our understanding of research contexts is shaped by researchers’ personal biographies and how relationships of power play out in diverse research teams. I use this example to raise wider issues regarding the impact that researchers' beliefs, expectations and backgrounds can have on research processes and outcomes, and how these can be taken into account.

Using research vingnettes to explore co-production in a large diverse team