Post/graduate Network Webinar: 'Desire in the Field'

The Post/Graduate Network of the New Zealand Geographical Society, a recently formed network that aims to strengthen the participation of students in the Society, recently hosted the second a series of online seminars and activities

The three webinars delivered to the workshop are downloadable below.

Post/graduate Network Webinar: “Desire in the field”

By Amanda Thomas (PhD candidate), Gradon Diprose (PhD candidate), and Renee Rushton (MDS candidate) – Victoria University

Abstract: A lot has been written within geography about the need to reflexively consider one’s own position when undertaking research. This is linked to the increasingly prevalent view that ‘research’ is a co-constituted process which involves the respondent and researcher participating in the construction of meaning. Yet, curiously there has been relatively limited discussion around the role of the erotic and emotions in the research process. In this presentation we each share an experience to illustrate the complex ways in which sexual encounters with research participants can affect the research process. Through a discussion of these stories we show how sexual and erotic encounters both shaped the research process and unsettled the way we understood and performed our own gendered sexuality and how these ideas intersect with our understandings of what it means to be a ‘good researchers’. Through this presentation we hope to initiate a wider discussion around how as researchers we uncertainly embody and perpetuate specific discourses through our gendered performances which have implications for how we understand ourselves as researchers and how others understand us.