I am a mature age South Asian woman currently undertaking a second PhD at a university in Victoria, Australia. My qualitative study straddles education and sociology, broadly focusing on the academic journeys and experiences of inclusion and exclusion of women of colour within Victorian universities. I have unpacked the data collected to critically reflect upon my own biases and reactions to the semi-structured interviews I undertook with the study participants, who like me are migrant women academics of colour from Commonwealth countries.

Fieldwork was undertaken during the pandemic (December 2020-21) and ongoing lockdowns in Melbourne. The contextual background was of Australian universities announcing almost daily redundancies. Several of the participants expressed their precarity, echoing my own fears of loss of work and income. Some clearly expected to be made redundant while others were more cautious in voicing their concerns. A couple of participants had been made redundant and claimed racial discrimination; further stoking my fears of being excluded as a woman of colour within Australian academe.

As a qualitative researcher I am mindful of the tense and vibrant understanding of intersubjectivity inherent in the practice of personal, epistemological, and feminist self-reflexivity (Palaganas 2017 et. al.). Reflexivity is not a straightforward uncomplicated process (Koopman et al 2020) requiring comprehension of the politics and environment surrounding the researcher (Hand 2003). Acknowledging reflexivity as “paying attention to and engaging with one’s own experience and noticing one’s movement of thought over an extended period of time, and by doing so noticing how this in turn affects one’s practice with others” (Warwick & Board 2012, p.4), I accept Pollner’s (1991 as cited in Warwick & Board) emphasis on the intimate connection between reflexivity and researcher experience, and consideration of such practice as unsettling and discomforting.

I identified with my study participants’ experiences in diverse ways, not just as an academic. Allen’s (2004) exhortation that the actual practice of reflexivity avoids tick boxing of academic rigour encouraged me to address the effects of this reflexivity on my own positioning as a minoritised academic of colour in a neoliberal space. Yet I am aware that my socio-economic and citizenship status, education, and able bodied self, render me less vulnerable than some participants.

The politics of my location inveigles itself while ‘doing’ reflexivity from a feminist standpoint. Researchers have concomitantly advocated caution in academic women tending to speak for Others (Alcoff 2009) yet insisted that their voices cannot be silenced. As a woman of colour working within the Australian tertiary sector, I designate myself as an inside researcher (Wohlfart 2020) yet am conscious how similar yet dissimilar I am to my study participants.

I exercise intersubjectivity turning the critically reflexive lens inwards in relation to the impact of my research. This leads to complicated queries on my own minority status. Do I measure my minoritisation and those of the study participants by social class, caste, race, gender, citizenship etc. and if so, how? Concomitantly where do my own pre-conceptions fit into this? Through autoethnography and journalling I work my own learning/unlearning in the process of conducting my fieldwork. As Finlay (2002) states, “we no longer seek to eradicate the researcher’s presence – instead subjectivity in research is transformed from a problem to an opportunity” (p.212). The current dilemma is how to ‘do’ reflexivity rather than why. However, researchers agree that the practice of the same is ambiguous, often a slippery slope and rarely uncomplicated being essentially subjective, relational, and dialogic (Gemignani 2017).

In this paper, I use a blend of Autoethnography and Reflective Journalling/Diarying to progress my reflexivities. I found a personal journal incredibly useful for noting down impressions and thoughts immediately after the semi-structured interviews with the research participants. It helped capture impressions which were often so fleeting that they felt like bits of cotton candy which dissolved on the tongue before the taste could be absorbed. A lifetime diarist, who views it “as an opportunity for reflection and inner dialogue” (Engin 2011, p.297) I found the research journal both a guide and a solace. It offered a space for not only noting down my observations but also outlining my own experiences of connectivity, distress, joy, discomfort, and recognition, affording scope for emotional reflexivity. As Nadin and Cassell (2006) observe, the research journal/diary helps the researcher document the social encounters during their fieldwork while simultaneously keeping the researcher aware of their epistemological positioning, thereby greatly aiding the reflexive process. De Sales (2003) advocates for Bildung, a concept signalling openness to meaning. This is crucial for researchers who aim to understand others and must first understand themselves as part of the qualitative research process. Here, like De Sales (2003), I too maintain a journal to unpack my own attitudes, prejudices, and certain pre-conceived notions regarding my research. The journal/diary is part of my ‘voiced reflections’ which are scrutinised through a critically reflexive approach. Autoethnography as method comprises a crucial part of this approach. In my scrabbling of materials (as contained in the journal) and scribbling of thoughts, often privately and furtively, I continued albeit one-sidedly the ‘human conversations’ (Badley 2022) I had previously had with my research participants during the interviews. There is a paucity of guidelines when considering how to ‘do’ reflexivity for academic research (Wohlfart 2020, Koopman et al 2020). Researchers advocate for diverse means of reflexivity be they visual, arts based, psychological or story based (Gemignani 2016, Riddick 2022) and the choice ultimately rests with the researcher. Hence, I have chosen to work with autoethnography as it offers scope for starting with a story as an entry point (Riddick 2022). Being human and Indian, I am a teller of tales. Autoethnography provides voice especially to those marginalised in academia (Lahiri Roy et. al. 2021) concomitantly aiding reflection and the ability to share my own story alongside my participants.

Riddick (2022) states that without stories we cannot heal. Delving into the story of my own reflexivity, I found the process not a cure but cathartic (Pillow 2003), albeit this catharsis contained elements of shock. Shock at acknowledging the ubiquitous encrustation of elements of my Brahmin caste identity visible after my interaction with an academic from a common background. Embarrassment reared its head when I heard stories of challenges which went beyond my own experiences of exclusion. My dismay that I was not bereft of envy of women of my age group who had ‘made it' opened another muddy trail (Finlay 2002). Confronting as these reflexivities were, I concur that bias is inherent in qualitative research (Galdas 2017). However, I refuse to become an apologist as in this very subjectivity lies the strength of interpretive work. Therefore, I endeavour to be one of “those researchers who begin their research with the data of their experience and seek to ‘embrace their own humanness as the basis for psychological understanding’ (Walsh, 1995, p.335). I found the reflexive process emancipatory. My triangulated framework of personal, epistemological, and feminist reflexivity helps map my route through the swamp of this research journey (Finlay 2002). A crucial aspect of this research is the reflexive questioning which emerged as a woman of colour, in empathy with my participants. What am I doing here in this environment? Why do I not go back where I come from? But where do I come from? I have not yet sorted out that question. If I speak of the place of origin –the barriers existed there as well . . . So, like many of my participants, where do I go from here? The responses will need further immersion in the data.

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