Much of the debate surrounding researcher identity in educational research is centred around the 'insider- outsider' (Merton, 1972) phenomenon, resting on the assumption that the researcher holds a more powerful position than the participants.However, the impact of globalisation in educational research intimates a need to readdress issues of the multiplicity of identities that researchers hold. It is important to focus not only on contexts where researchers have less powerful positions than participants (e.g. interviewing elite participants), but more pointedly, on contexts where researchers' positionalities are in flux. This paper presents a personal account of the convergence of multiple identities and dynamic positionalities and the possible implications for international and comparative educational research. I argue that as 'real life' identities become more complex and as geographic fieed locations become more accessible, mediating these real-life identities for fieldwork becomes even more problematic. The traditional dichotomy between field representations and real-life identity is an insufficient paradigm from which to view the complex social relations that researchers must manage and through which data are accessed. In essence, such analyses ignore hybridity and multiplicity and assume that ascribed and attained attributes and resulting positionalities are fixed across time and space.As a Canadian of Indian origin (and attached to what is considered an elite British university), conducting research in India with participants that ranged from senior ranking government officials to socio-economically disadvantaged parents, tensions of identity and positionality were constantly highlighted. As the researcher positionality was constantly in flux it was mediated by living in a hybridised identity that was inexorably linked to my perceived real-life identity. The two were not dichotomous, rather drew on one another to access data. Various forms of what is termed here as 'currency' (that which is a medium of exchange) attached to the mediated identity were used to negotiate access to research sites and participants. The media of exchange for information were: language, cultural background, and outward props (e.g. Indian or western clothes, mode of transport, etc.). These were conceptualised as the malleable tools to my identity. The different currencies, in effect the malleable tools to my identity, were used to mediate my researcher positionality in order to collect data. Hybridity further manifested itself during the analytic phase when I "slipped in between" (Rossman & Rallis, 1998) the two analytic languages: the 'language of the data' (Hindi) and the 'language I use to think in' (English). The process of analysis prolematised the role of language and translation in accessing, interpreting, and presenting data. The presentation will highlight how such technical and social elements were reconciled during the process of data collection and analysis, in an attempt to bring forward the educational research methodology agenda in capturing a certain level o authenticity that is otherwise snuffed out of such discourse.