This paper examines how racialised positioning operates as a methodological condition in educational research conducted within predominantly White institutional contexts in Denmark. As a brown, visibly minoritised female educational researcher who wears a headscarf, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork to explore how my body, presence, and research focus on racialisation and inequality are read, negotiated, and ascribed meaning by teachers in the field. Rather than treating positionality as a static identity statement, the paper foregrounds positioning as an ongoing, relational process shaped by others’ perceptions, institutional norms, and racialised power relations (Thapar- Björkert & Farahani, 2019; Zembylas, 2025). Across multiple research encounters, my presence has at times generated unease, particularly when conversations touch upon sensitive issues such as discrimination, language use, pupil categorisation, and race. This unease is expressed through linguistic caution, explicit negotiations over “acceptable” terminology, bodily signs of discomfort, avoidance of contact, and, in some cases, challenges to my professional legitimacy. These interactions illuminate what recent scholarship conceptualises as perceived racialised positionality (PRP): the ways in which researchers’ racialised bodies are interpreted by others, shaping ethical relations, access, and authority in the research process (Gobena et al., 2025). The paper argues that such moments of friction are not merely interpersonal but structurally produced within educational systems marked by whiteness, race-evasiveness, and claims of innocence, particularly in Nordic and European contexts (Clark, K., & Vertelyté, 2023; Wekker, 2016). These dynamics actively shape what can be said, what remains unspeakable, and what forms of data become accessible (Milner, 2007; Berger, 2015). At the same time, racialised positioning can also generate specific forms of insight, enabling critical readings of silences, hesitations, and affective responses that might otherwise remain unexamined. By situating researcher positionality as a methodological and epistemic condition rather than a personal attribute, the paper contributes to feminist and critical debates on knowledge production in education. It highlights how reflexive engagement with racialised positioning can move beyond descriptive accounts of positionality toward a more critical practice of positioning—one that exposes how racism operates through everyday research interactions and informs the development of critical and feminist pedagogies of race in higher education (Hooks, 2014).

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