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Leaving the field: (de‐)linked lives of the researcher and research assistant
Author(s) -
Caretta Martina Angela,
Cheptum Florence Jemutai
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
area
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1475-4762
pISSN - 0004-0894
DOI - 10.1111/area.12342
Subject(s) - reflexivity , life course approach , perspective (graphical) , embodied cognition , sociology , field (mathematics) , interdependence , point (geometry) , moment (physics) , epistemology , psychology , social psychology , social science , visual arts , art , philosophy , physics , geometry , classical mechanics , mathematics , pure mathematics
Leaving the field is a crucial moment that has been examined neither from an emotional point of view nor from a life course perspective. In this co‐authored paper, we, the researcher and the research assistant, analyse through our diaries how this moment was entangled with decisive life events and how our emotions were conditioned by our embodied experience of sickness, separation and incertitude towards the future. Departing from life course and feminist geographical reflexive standpoints, we engage with the complexities of positionality and turning points. Drawing on the duality of our experiences of separation and the individual and collective evolution of our positionalities and identities, this paper reifies the life course principle of linked lives by examining the interdependency of researchers’ and research assistants’ lives.