What is positionality and what does it do? Assistant Professor of Environmental Justice in Education Christopher Jadallah (2024) says that positionality can be described as the influence that a researcher’s perspective and stance—constituted from what Ellen Kohl and Priscilla McCutcheon (2015) call a “laundry list” (p. 747) of identity markers (eg race, gender, class)—has in the conduct and approach of their research (or other work). In research, positionality informs how each of us develops research questions, gathers data, uses analysis methods, and draws conclusions.
Embracing positionality helps researchers build better research projects: healthier relationships with inquirers and peers, and more interesting, transparent and respectful ways of doing research. Positionality honours the limits of what any one person, from a specific standpoint, can contribute to a project that is almost always bigger than us as individuals.
So why do researchers avoid positionality so much? Why is it often an afterthought or an inconvenience? wiradyuri water scholar kate harriden uses her experience with positionality as a researcher and an educator who leads positionality work, to address these questions.
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Working with Indigenous peoples and Indigenous research methods requires understanding and working with the underlying ontologies (ways of being); to know and challenge your worldview. To do this properly and effectively means you need to have a clear idea of your positionality. That is: how you are placed, within the context of your personal ontologies, projects, and colleagues.
And yet the uptake of positionality is slow across scholarly disciplines. Reflecting on my experience of working with undergraduate and postgraduate students and laypeople, I suspect the following myths may be contributing academic apathy. In addressing these myths, I ask you to embrace the self-reflexive opportunity that positionality presents to improve your research approach and practice.
Myth 1: you don’t have a position
It is not credible that you do not have a position in relation to the work you do, the ideas and concepts driving that work or the people you work with. No one is neutral, unbiased or objective, including those trained in the allegedly objective world of hegemonic science.
Myth 2: positionality doesn’t matter
It is also not credible that your position does not matter to or influence your relationships with work, colleagues, research participants, or the concepts you work with (and those you chose to not work with).
Your position does matter. If you chose to not interrogate your characteristics, and the ideas or beliefs underpinning your research or professional activities, you will be effectively operating in, and as, a black box. That is: you do not really understand what informs your relational responses to colleagues and professional or research situations.
Even though you may think that you are ‘position-free’ or that your position does not influence your work and working relationships, others may disagree. If you don’t articulate any position, those engaging with your work are likely to ascribe one to it, and you. Failing to let them know your relevant biases complicates the capacity of scholars from different standpoints to contribute to and mature your research.
Myth 3: positionality statements are hard to write
Ok, this isn’t a myth…doing this kind of self-reflexive work can be challenging and takes time and effort. Often, the idea that positionality statements are hard to write feeds into a more readily buried conclusion: that they are not worth doing compared to other, simpler and more pressing tasks that researchers feel more confident in completing.
Prioritise and persist. Understanding your positional/ity is worth doing. It does get easier. Most people start with a long, almost life, story to help recognize their various identity markers. From this longer writing comes the nuggets for almost every positionality statement you may need to write.
Myth 4: positionality statements are just academic wankery
While positionality statements may be more common in Humanities Arts and the Social Sciences (HASS) than Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), that does not mean that they are an academic indulgence or HASS wankery. Positionality thinking is increasingly common, done in a variety of settings and a variety of ways. You’ll find some examples in the references at the end of this decoloyarn.
Myth 5: positionality statements are simple static laundry lists of identity markers
Positionality statements are much more than a ‘laundry list’ of your identity markers. And your position/ality is not static. Each new activity, sometimes even different phases of the same activity, requires your positionality be considered for that specific context. Positionality statements are not ‘set and forget’. They are a tool for teaching you how to be in relationship with all things, and in this way improve your critical, investigative and collaborative rigour.
Your position/ality changes over time because you change, as do your skills and expertise. That the significance or relevance of entries on your laundry list would also change should not be a surprise.
So what?
To ensure your positionality statement is more than a laundry list, the essential trick is asking, repeatedly, ‘so what?’ do specific markers on the list bring to (or detract from) a specific project or activity. A deceptively simply ‘formula’ for crafting positionality statements could be: your standpoint + so what?. ‘So what?’ is how your key identity markers and the specific context providing their significance intermesh to guide your research practice, for example, working with peers, conducting enquiry, research methods selection, or results presentation.
Understanding that your position shifts in response to a specific project or activity underlines the importance of positionality statements becoming embedded in your professional research practice. By making positionality statements one aspect of your standard operating procedures, you may find yourself ahead of other researchers.
‘So what?’ has significance beyond individual positionality statements. Sarah Homen (2023) draws together the experiences of reader-scholars such as Yvonne Te Ruki-Rangi-o-Tangaroa Underhill-Sem, to effectively show how writing without positionality statements contributes to colonising knowledge.
To the many readers who benefit from traditional academic standpoints, and associated positions of privilege and power, I invite you to be the person in your research centre, collective, office or School who bravely asks your peers to engage in positionality work. Not as a defensive confession that closes down conversation, justifies harmful behaviour or objectionable research practices, but as a professional, respectful way of relating to one another through difference. To paraphrase Kohl and McCutcheon (2015), bringing discussions of positionality into everyday conversation creates a powerful way of knowing and being that can demarcate the expertise and limitations of each person in a group, research project, or workplace.
Critically, ‘so what?’ echoes beyond academia. Positionality is a process to explore yourself and your relationship with the world, and a practice for learning how to live and work adequately in First Nations contexts and with Country.
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Resources for your positionality statements
A practical method of becoming accustomed to the uses of positionality statements, is to watch them in action. One example is a recent paper written by members of the Fenner Decolonising Research and Teaching Circle (2024). First Peoples and settlers co-authored the piece, and resultantly spoke from varying standpoints in order to form a whole experiential picture of life in the Circle in a colonial scholarly context. You can read the paper, and the brief positionality statements provided for the piece, here.
Ennser-Kananen, J. (2020) Coming to terms with ourselves in our research language on the move, https://www.languageonthemove.com/coming-to-terms-with-ourselvesin-our-research/
Homan, S. (2023) Why positioning identity matters in decolonsing research and knowledge production: how to write a ‘positionality statement’ The Equality Institute https://www.equalityinstitute.org/blog/how-to-write-a-positionality-statement
Jadallah, C. (2024) Positionality, relationality, place, and land: Consideration for ethical research with communities. Qualitative Research doi.org//10.1177/14687941241246174
Kohl, E., & McCutcheon, P. (2015). Kitchen table reflexivity: negotiating positionality through everyday talk. Gender, Place and Culture, 22(6), 747-763. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2014.958063
Image attribution: Shiftchange, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons – Mural design by Aunty Peggy Tidyman, Gunggari Elder, Cycles of change, 2020. Photo of a mural on the eastern side of the Logan City Council Art Gallery in Logan Central, Yagara and Yagumbeh Country.
Decoloyarns 