Positionality

This article presents a new positional perspective for the analysis of dia-spora mobilization in international relations (IR), seeking to shift debates beyond realist, liberalist, and constructivist thinking, and speaking to a cluster of sociopositional theories in IR. It provides a conceptual discussion and empirical illustrations of diaspora positionality—the power diaspora activists derive from their sociospatial positions in particular contexts—and its utility to account for different mobilization trajectories. Positionality as a sociospatial concept offers opportunities to analyze diaspora politics beyond statist paradigms, dominated by analyses of triadic relationships between diasporas, host states (immigration states), and home states (sending states). Diasporas have links to many contexts beyond host states and original home states. Such linkages structure their relationships globally. If diaspora entrepreneurs perceive themselves as deriving strong powers to achieve homeland-oriented goals from a particular sociospatial context, they are more likely to pursue claims through institutional politics and moderate means. If they perceive themselves as deriving weak powers from a context, they are more likely to engage with activist networks and pursue claims in transgressive ways. The conceptual discussion engages aspects of diaspora positionality in juxtaposition with other spatial concepts such as geographical proxim-ity/distance and position in a social network. The empirical discussion brings patterns of mobilization trajectories from the Armenian diaspora mobilization for genocide recognition and the Palestinian diaspora mobilization for statehood, informed by a rich multisited fieldwork. Acknowledgments: I would like to express gratitude to the European Research Council for its sponsorship of the research conducted for this article with grant 284198. I also would like to thank colleagues who gave helpful feedback of earlier drafts or during my presentations at the International Studies Association, Warwick University,

In this article, I draw on the experiences of Iraqi diasporas in the UK and Sweden after the 2003 US‐led intervention to demonstrate how ethno‐sectarianism in Iraq has affected their political transnationalism. Using the concepts of intersectionality and positionality, I show how the reconfiguration of the social positions of individuals and groups in the diaspora affects their types of political engagement and the spaces in which political mobilization takes place. In the case of the Iraqi diaspora, I show how, among other things, the social categories of ethnicity, religion and gender create positions of both subordination and privilege, which inhibit, reshape and empower the political actions of diasporas in both the homeland and host country. In societies divided along ethnic, religious or tribal lines, the social positions of individuals and groups relative to the dominant ethnic/religious political parties and the nationalist ideology they promote determine the nature of their diasporic mobilization.

Like the development industry, development pedagogy and practice have begun to take into account the role of emotions and the deeper, affective and embodied experiences of understanding and doing development. In her groundbreaking piece 'Emotional geographies of development', Sarah Wright illustrates how emotions not only create development subjects and associated subjectivities, but also provide a powerful entry point for resistance that may ultimately lead to transformative social change. Post-colonial and feminist scholars have long emphasised the role of emotions such as anger, fear, shame, joy and hope in discursive construction of the 'Other' and the persistence of false binaries that obscure layers of struggle, exclusion and disen-franchisement. In this paper, we (students and educators) reflect on the role of emotions and affective engagements with development, drawing upon classroom discussions as well as reading and reflection logs of those studying for a Master in International Development (MID) at the University of Western Australia. We explore how explicit efforts to be attentive to our own emotions while digesting and deliberating material for this unit allow us to better grasp our own positionality while revisiting our personal entanglements with the 'Other'-the quintessential development subject. Making space for 'more-than-rational' aspects of development enables scholars and educators to experiment with affective options for interdisciplinary teaching in a distinctly more personal way than students may expect from a postgraduate degree in international development.

The theory of the treadmill of production highlights how the constant search for economic growth leads to advanced economies being stuck on a " treadmill, " where their well-being is not improved by economic growth, yet the impacts of this pursuit of growth causes massive, unsustainable environmental damages. In interrogating the specific driving force that keeps the irrational system of the treadmill so powerfully in place, the theory of the treadmill of production focuses on how those who control the production process, corporations, are the primary agents driving the treadmill, while also highlighting how the state and workers generally continue to provide support for the treadmill's continued reproduction. In thinking about ways to begin to unwind the treadmill, there is a clear need to explore why workers, who are also consumers and citizens, continue to support (reluctantly or not) the treadmill of production. Through an analysis of the positional economy of consumption, this paper identifies key stakes that individual consumers have in expanding their income and consumption levels through the treadmill of production, despite the widespread inefficacy of the treadmill to increase aggregate satisfaction levels. This theory of the positional economy of consumption identifies the structural forces that lock individuals into increasing their income and levels of " defensive consumption " merely to maintain their existing levels of social practices and the well-being generated from them, thus further supporting the reproduction of the treadmill of production. La théorie de l''engrenage de la production' ('treadmill of production') démontre en quoi la recherche constante de croissance économique enferme les économies avancées dans un 'engrenage', où leur bien-être n'est pas amélioré par la croissance économique, mais où les impacts de la poursuite de la croissance se traduisent par des dommages environnementaux massifs et irréparables. En analysant les forces spécifiques qui préservent ce système avec autant de pouvoir, cette théorie insiste sur l'importance de ceux qui contrôlent le processus de production (les corporations) en tant que principaux agents appuyant cet 'engrenage', tout en soulignant comment, d'une manière générale, l'Etat et les travailleurs persistent à soutenir sa perpétuation. En pensant aux manières d'arrêter cet 'engranage', il y a un besoin évident d'étudier pourquoi les travailleurs, qui sont aussi consommateurs et citoyens, persistent à soutenir (à contrecoeur ou pas) cet 'engrenage' de la production. Grâce à une analyse de l'économie positionnelle de la consommation, cet article identifie les principaux intérêts qu'ont les consommateurs individuels à augmenter leurs revenus et leurs niveaux de consommation au sein de cet engrenage de la production, en dépit de son inefficacité générale à améliorer les niveaux de satisfactions agrégés. Cette théorie de l'économie positionnelle de la consommation identifie

This paper addresses the thorny issue of complicity with wrongdoing under conditions of systemic political violence, such as authoritarianism, totalitarianism or military occupation. The challenge of dealing with collaborators – those who colluded with the apparatus of repression or who benefitted from its existence – is central to subsequent processes of justice and memory-making. This paper proposes several arguments. Firstly, it claims we need to think about complicity and resistance not dichotomically, but as a continuum of locations individuals can occupy. Secondly, these locations are influenced by the agents’ positionality within the social world, each agent being situated at the intersection of several axes of distinction: class, gender, racialisation, and religion, among others. Thirdly, to understand complicity we also need to draw a connection between individual’s experience of time and their actions: temporality is experienced from within a social position, through the interplay between memory, imagination and hope. Positionality thus affects one’s memories and self-understanding, the scope of one’s imagination, as well as the type and intensity of one’s hopes. Therefore, individuals’ capacity to build on the past to imagine a future, to invest emotionally in the future and act accordingly are interrelated aspects of their experience, which will influence how they navigate the muddy waters of systemic wrongdoing, more or less complicitly. To give concreteness to these three theoretical arguments, the paper discusses several forms of complicity with violence during the Vichy Regime in France.

In recent years, there has been increased interest in, and work towards,
decolonising the curriculum in higher education institutions in the UK. There are various initiatives to review university syllabuses and identify alternative literature. However, there is an increasing risk of turning ‘decolonisation’ into a buzz term tied to a trend. We fear that decolonisation within academia is becoming an empty term, diluted and depoliticised, allowing for superficial representations that fail to address racial, political and socio-economic intersectionalities. In this article, we examine several initiatives to decolonise the curriculum with a focus on the field of education as a discipline and medium. Based on our analysis, we engage with three main themes: conceptualisation, positionality and conduct. The article concludes that decolonisation cannot happen in a vacuum, or as an
aim disconnected from the rest of the structure of the university, which leads to diluting a wider movement and turns into a box-ticking exercise. We argue that there needs to be a deconstruction of asymmetrical power relationships within academic spaces to allow for meaningful decolonisation in practice. This requires a real political will, a change in the structure, and in the hearts and minds of those in decision-making positions, and a shift in the practices of knowledge production.

Despite a robust body of scholarship on positionality, the practice of international Higher Education research often neglects engagement with the varied, fluid and complex positionalities of researchers across national boundaries. Through a series of vignettes, the authors argue for reflexivity that extends beyond rigid social identities and towards embodied knowledge, or self‐understanding that is mutable and context responsive. For international mobile researchers especially, new affinities can evolve through propinquity and social custom, and gradually become incorporated into self‐knowledge with the passing of time. Beyond mere cultural competency, this article raises the importance of symbolic competency that simultaneously negotiates the
multiple dimensions of language, various forms of capital, as well as evolving social identities in conducting research in different contexts.

The article unpacks the issues of bias and partisanship—and the risk of being accused of these—which confront social scientists who study socio-political conflict. Drawing on the author's experience when conducting research on the conflict between animal liberation activists and their state and corporate adversaries in Britain (1999–2014), the article argues for a relational research approach—focusing on the interaction between contending parties, rather than study stakeholders singly—as a way to overcome challenges of taking sides when studying socio-political conflict. The debate generated by Howard Becker's classic essay ''Whose side are we on?'' (1967), now 50 years old, is used throughout the article as a point of reference for addressing the issues involved. The argument is made for constant reflexivity during research on radical social movements, and for ''temporary bias'' during qualitative fieldwork.

In the last few decades, an engaged and sophisticated discussion about the production of data, and power relations has developed within feminist methodology. Positionality, i.e. the set of relations constituting informants’ and researchers’ subject positions, has been widely used as an analytical tool to account for the complicated ways in which data is co-constructed in fieldwork. Based on our own experience of fieldwork, however, we argue that sexuality is underrepresented in this debate. First, reflexive writing on fieldwork has been reluctant to consider sexuality as a category in the same way, for instance, as gender or race. Second, even apparently innocuous sexualisations have a considerable effect on the constitution of data and are therefore worth including in the analysis.
In this article we examine how flirtation as a part of the participant-researcher-relation has re-shaped the research encounters in our respective research projects. We discuss the complex navigations between conflicting rationales that it entailed for us as researchers, depict the minor and major shifts in positionalities that emerge from the flirtation, and examine the reasons why we sometimes embraced flirtation and sometimes rejected it. The objective of the article is to further enrich feminist methodological writing, and to suggest to the reader the potential for including various shades of sexual performances, such as apparently harmless flirtation, into our reflections on data collection.

Nitel araştırmalarda en önemli araştırma enstrümanı olan araştırmacının, araştırmaya olası etkilerini anlama noktasında "konumsallık" önemli bir metodolojik kavram olarak karşımıza çıkmaktadır. "Araştırma sürecinin" ve genel olarak araştırmacının kimliğine ve ideolojik duruşuna göre tanımlanan "konumsallığın" birbirleri üzerine olası etkileri bu makalenin temel tartışma konusudur. Alan yazında çoğunlukla, "içeriden" ya da "dışarıdan" bir araştırma sürecine yol açan koşullar ve bu koşulların araştırma üzerine olumlu/olumsuz etkileri tartışılmaktadır. "Tamamen içeriden" ya da "tamamen dışarıdan" bir araştırmanın mümkün olup olmadığı ise genellikle sorgulama dışı bırakılmaktadır. Farklı olarak, bu makalede, araştırma sürecinde konumlar arasında keskin bir ayrımın mümkün olup olmadığı sorgulanmaktadır. Ayrıca, araştırmacı ile araştırması arasındaki ilişkisellik tartışılmaktadır. Sonuç olarak, "içeriden" ve "dışarıdan" konumlar arası uzlaşının mümkün olabileceği ve konumsallığı "arada alan" olarak benimsemenin faydaları ortaya konmuştur. Araştırmacının kendi konumunun farkına varması ve bulgular üzerine etkisini kontrol edebilmesi için ise "düşünümsellik" önemli bir metodolojik tutum olarak ön plana çıkmıştır.
Anahtar Sözcükler: konumsallık, içeriden/dışarıdan, kimlik, ideoloji, düşünümsellik

This paper seeks to extend scholarship rethinking insiderness in qualitative research through an examination of the shifting terrain of the constitution of insides in an ethnographic research on everyday politics of integration and belonging in eastern Berlin. I reflect here on my experiences as a Slovak national with immigration experience, a nominal outsider to both the country of research, Germany, and its immigrant subjects, the post-Soviet Russian- speaking migrants. Focusing on the production of time-spaces of proximity as a deeply situational process, I stress in particular the unexpected bases for convergence with particular subjects. I argue here that the omission of the more elusive experiential and emotional aspects of relationality at the expense of dominant categories of identity, however intersectionally conceived, produces an impoverished conception of insiderness. The second focus of the paper is laid on the complexities of research on immigrant integration that involves parties/constituencies with structurally varying stakes in the broader politics of integration. Here I highlight the dangers and the dilemmas of an immigrant researcher herself being put into a position of Honig’s (2001) “immigrant super-citizen” in such a research.

In this article, I look at how political ethnography can contribute to the study of religious dynamics within conservative religious communities. Based on fieldwork conducted in Tajikistan within conservative Muslim circles, I take a reflexive stance by arguing that my informants used my status as a single foreign woman to steer interactions toward those of my religious conversion and need for marriage. Their repeated efforts and our interactions exposed the depth of their religious beliefs and its precedence over other identity markers such as ethnicity and language. This close access also allowed me to witness the exclusion and distrust that conservative Muslims face from the rest of the society as well as state authorities. Ultimately, I argue that political ethnography enables the production of a more nuanced portrait of conservative Muslims communities, which are often represented as hermetic and hostile. Political ethnography can be particularly useful to investigate sensitive issues such as religious identities and their complex relations to structures of power.

This paper explores the implications of shared femininity in a qualitative study of friendship networks amongst Russian-speaking migrants in London by a Russian researcher. Drawing upon feminist literature on the complexities of women interviewing women, I outline the reflexive approach to positionality informing power relations and establishment of trust in the relationship between the researcher and the researched. The examples of interviewing a friend and two friendly strangers demonstrate the ways of negotiating mutual positions in the interaction. Shared gender is regarded as partially, but not universally, promoting rapport, taking into account the intersectionality of multiple differences between women. Considering the researcher's positionality has been presented in this paper as a means of making similarities and differences between participants useful for the critical interpretation of the work, and using its relevant aspects for building a positive, open, and more equal interaction.

What does it mean to engage in Deaf Studies and who gets to define the field? What would a truly deaf-led Deaf Studies research program look like? What are the research practices of deaf scholars in Deaf Studies, and how do they relate to deaf research participants and communities? What innovations do deaf scholars deem necessary in the field of Deaf Studies? In Innovation in Deaf Studies: The Role of Deaf Scholars, volume editors Annelies Kusters, Maartje De Meulder, and Dai O'Brien and their contributing authors tackle these questions and more. Spurred by a gradual increase in the number of Deaf Studies scholars who are deaf, and by new theoretical trends in Deaf Studies, this book creates an important space for contributions from deaf researchers, to see what happens when they enter into the conversation. Innovation in Deaf Studies expertly foregrounds deaf ontologies (defined as "deaf ways of being") and how the experience of being deaf is central not only to deaf research participants' own ontologies, but also to the positionality and framework of the study as a whole. Further, this book demonstrates that the research and methodology built around those ontologies offer suggestions for new ways for the discipline to meet the challenges of the present, which includes productive and ongoing collaboration with hearing researchers. Providing fascinating perspective and insight, Kusters, De Meulder, O'Brien, and their contributors all focus on the underdeveloped strands within Deaf Studies, particularly on areas around deaf people's communities, ideologies, literature, religion, language practices, and political aspirations.

Mass tourism is a historically significant phenomenon. For decades, it has been a source for stereotypes within academic research and in public discussions. This study addresses stereotypes of mass tourism by giving voice to travel agents and tourist guides working for mass package tour operators. They were asked to comment and reflect on the statements about phenomenon in which they are working. The Finnish socio-cultural context is discussed as well as the positionality and contextuality of the interviewees. In total, 20 interviews were conducted. The results show that there is no one way to understand these stereotypes: Both professional groups contextualized and scaled the universalist statements in multiple ways. In tourism research, more attention should be directed at how the categorization of mass tourism is done as a discursive practice and what kinds of effects it has to the theory and practice.

In recent years, there has been increased attention on promoting access to computer science among all students. Our study seeks to address the underrepresentation of racially minoritized youth in computer science by offering a culturally responsive after-school coding club at a local public library that serves a racially and socioeconomically diverse community. We analyzed facilitator interviews and student focus groups using qualitative data analysis with a focus on facilitator positionality and culturally responsive frameworks. Findings suggest facilitator positionality helped establish affirming, near-peer relationships with participants and situated facilitators as advocates for expanding and diversifying computer science. Additionally, the culturally responsive frameworks helped students to feel a sense of belonging in both the informal learning environment and in the field of computer science.

This working paper presents a first analysis of irrigation practices and irrigation development interventions in a village located in the central Karakorum, northern Pakistan. The social arrangements that for centuries sustained farmer-managed irrigation systems are seen to have, due to a range of factors, come under increased pressure in recent decades. Yet in the high altitude mountain valleys of the Karakorum, irrigation systems continue to be managed effectively, for without irrigation life in such desert landscapes would be untenable. This research seeks to understand how it is that farming communities continue to sustain their irrigation systems. It focuses on irrigation practices, water rights systems, and irrigation projects and the socio-political context within which they are situated. Field research, using ethnographic and participatory methods, was conducted in spring 2013 in the upper Shigar valley, Skardu district, Gilgit-Baltistan.
The village is shown to have a historically constructed, distinct materiality, embedded in broader sets of historically constituted social relations while simultaneously regulating and mediating contemporary social relations. This is illustrated by a discussion surrounding irrigation practices and related water rights systems, drawing on the work of Coward (1986, 1990) and Schmidt (2000, 2004, 2008). Local politics involves village-based actors, government agencies and local politicians, a non-government organisation which channels European funds into the region, and religious leaders, all of whom exert different forms of territorial power (essentially, control over resources). Cox’s (1998) notion of ‘spaces of dependence, spaces of engagement’ is shown to be a useful conceptual tool for understanding how water users strive to secure the conditions for their continued existence, e.g. by drawing value (capital) towards the irrigation channels within their village. Thus a group of water-users may strive to secure their farmland’s water supply, while a village-based political leader is concerned with his reputation as well as his village’s water supply. Spaces of dependence relate to an actor’s positionality, and the spaces constructed connect differentially positioned and endowed actors via networks of association that span geographically and politically delineated nested jurisdictions.

In this paper I explore questions related to the epistemological and ontological differences existing between Euro-Western and Indigenous ways of knowing. Revealing myself to the reader through positioning, I explore the possibility of reaching an ethical middle ground, while occupying an unearned position of privilege. In doing so, I discuss the personal process of decolonization and its location within my research. Drawing on the works of Indigenous scholars, I discuss the potential for a neutral, ethical, space-bridging worldview. In conclusion, I highlight details about how meaningful knowledge creation can aid a non-Aboriginal researcher engaged in an Aboriginal research paradigm.

This paper considers the positionality and reflexivity of non- Romani, ally-identified researchers vis-à-vis insider/outsider research by critically examining – or queer(y)ing – non-Romani researcher identity and the privilege that goes with it. On a theoretical level this can be facilitated by, for example, queer theoretical concepts and the concept of critical whiteness. Critical whiteness is “queer” by virtue of being counter/non/ anti-normative in relation to whiteness as a social norm (white- normativity). In practical terms, employing queer, feminist, and critical whiteness methodologies means that reflective and reflexive researchers conducting research “with,” “for,” and “on” Roma do not “have to be” Romani in order to participate in knowledge production on Romani communities. Nonetheless, it implicates their ability to critically examine their own privilege and challenge it accordingly, that is, not only academically but also politically and socially.

This unique companion is a much-needed guide for those who are embarking on field research in conflict-affected countries. In a break with academic tradition, the chapters are mainly written in the first person and contain personal accounts of the ethical and practical challenges of fieldwork. In the book, over thirty scholars reflect on the complexity of dealing with human subjects in conflict-affected contexts. This indispensable book provides insider knowledge and gives confidence to researchers - both those at the very start of their careers or during their studies, and experienced researchers who want to consider positionality, responsibility and the moral obligation of the researcher in new ways. Essential reading for students and scholars embarking upon fieldwork in International Relations, Politics, Sociology, Political Geography and Anthropology.

Drawing from scholarship in feminist political geography that embraces discomfort and unease as generative features of social encounter along with the literature on decolonial ethics for research, Murrey argues that further concrete work is necessary to deconstruct the artificial barriers between ‘the field’/home-site and that this project remains particularly acute for research ‘on Africa’ given its position in a global colonial system. To these ends, Murrey makes three interconnected arguments: (a) ‘women researching in Africa’ are responsible for challenging masculinist and colonial epistemologies. (b) This would mean, among others, moving beyond guilt and compassion to an explicit political consciousness of decolonization. (c) Such a consciousness is centered upon attention to the functions of race, particularly global whiteness and anti-blackness, for research in Africa.

Research on public service interpreting employs a number of methods to examine a range of variables, from specific linguistic and paralinguistic variables to spatial positioning, agency, and ethics. These methods, however, require explicit recognition of the researcher’s positionality in order to ensure appropriate data analysis and interpretation of results. This article examines the unique aspects of the interpreting studies research that requires reflection when conducting work in this area. Two specific types of bias, namely social desirability bias and the Hawthorne effect, are discussed in detail to illustrate the type of reflective practice required to ensure valid, reliable, and credible results. The article concludes with a brief reflection on how positionality may be a starting point for discussion surrounding the agency of the researcher.

Researcher positionality has gained increased attention in recent years, and music education is following suit. Carrying out research that addresses diversity in music education demands a high level of reflexivity and a problematising of one's own position as researcher. This chapter offers critical insights into the complexity of such a positioning and how research practices might reflect, confirm and/or disrupt the existing 'body politic' that our bodies signify. Researcher positionality is here examined in terms of pregnancy within a research project based at an asylum seeker accommodation centre. Applying a Butlerian lens to the examination, the chapter uncovers how the researcher's pregnant body was 'performed' and became the main focus of 'recognition' amongst the people encountered at the centre. These processes of 'performing' and being 'recognised' as a 'pregnant researcher' manifested in various ways such as gaining access, credibility, trust, relationships, ethical considerations and power. Thus, the chapter opens a space to reflect critically on researcher positionality and specifically its influence on the research process in sites that seek to understand diversity in music education.

In this paper, I reflect on the discipline of historiography and its application to conflict resolution. I start from concepts found in the phenomenological writings of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. I expand upon these to discuss the concept of positionality within time and space to uncover the context-specificity of nationalist historical tropes. I provide a brief overview of other applications of phenomenology to other branches of the social sciences. In order to illustrate these concepts, I use examples of temporal and spatial positionality from Turkish historiography. I thereby explore the manner in which an understanding of the individual's location and perspective vis-à-vis the State can be employed to grasp the changes that the writing of Turkish has undergone over the last centrury. I conclude with suggestions on a method to transcend the positional fixity contained within national meta-narratives, and to refocus history on individuals and their stories rather than the agenda of the state.

At many moments during the 2015 Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS) Assembly last May, I found myself becoming quite emotional. In fact, I will amend that statement: I didn't just become emotional, I let myself both feel and express my emotions, in public, to myself and to all those who might have been paying attention....

...In writing this, I feel as if I am somehow coming out as an "emotional academic." As if it were a thing I have been trying to keep hidden (not very successfully, probably) over the years. Yet I also suspect this label is one with which many of us might self-identify. Moreover, I believe that we need to own our emotionality when it comes to food scholarship, and to find ways to incorporate it actively into our work. Certainly, food is an emotional, personal, and intersubjective topic, and so perhaps these qualities should be woven into the theoretical foundations and methodological practices of the field.

Fieldwork is often framed as an individualistic rite of passage, wherein the researcher is a ‘neutral’ observer, thereby obscuring gender, racial and citizenship hierarchies. Feminist scholars have pushed against this
assumption, leading to insights on researchers’ roles in fieldwork relations and knowledge production. We combine feminist perspectives and land change science (LCS) approaches to examine interactions between researcher positionality and knowledge production. While ‘the field’ is a critical component in LCS research, there is a dearth of critical work on positionality. We examine how our positionalities – as a black, Ghanaian graduate student and a white, tenured professor – produce differential fieldwork relations. We link our experiences and relations to methods, results and ethics, revealing important implications for LCS researchers. We conclude by suggesting validation of self-reflection on positionality, as well as disruption of white hetero-patriarchism, create inclusive spaces, in terms of social differences, epistemology and methodology.

This book offers in-depth insight into the lives of queer Roma, thus providing rich evidence of the heterogeneity of Roma. The lived experiences of queer Roma, which are very diverse regionally and otherwise, pose a fundamental challenge to one-dimensional, negative misrepresentations of Roma as homophobic and antithetical to European and Western modernity. The book platforms Romani agency and voices in an original and novel way. This enables the reader to feel the individuals behind the data, which detail stories of rejection by Romani families and communities, and non-Romani communities; and unfamiliar, groundbreaking stories of acceptance by Romani families and communities. Combining intersectionality with queer theory innovatively and applying it to Romani Studies, the author supports her arguments with data illustrating how the identities of queer Roma are shaped by antigypsyism and its intersections with homophobia and transphobia. Thanks to its theoretical and empirical content, and its location within a book series on LGBTIQ lives that appeals to an international audience, this authoritative book will appeal to a wide range of readers. It will a be useful resource for libraries, community and social service workers, third-sector Romani and LGBTIQ organisations, activists and policymakers; an invaluable source of information for scholars, teachers and students of bigger modules in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate courses in a cross section of academic disciplines and subject areas.

This article follows a decolonial perspective to suggest that fieldwork can be a useful tool in reconfiguring African literary studies. Drawing from the positive reception to her Ghanaian nationality in Tanzania, she writes that fieldwork can produce possibilities for relocating Africa in African studies by centering the lived experiences of interlocutors. Her paper asserts an ethical responsibility of researchers towards their interlocutors to produce knowledge that is collaboratively drawn, seeing the field not only as a site of data extraction but also of theorization and intellectual knowledge production. Her paper also reveals a complicated relationship with her institution based in the west which was received negatively by her interlocutors as a process of re-colonisation.