My colleagues and I convened the panel and presented at the 15^th Annual Ethnography Symposium, 24 to 26 August 2022, University of Suffolk, UK.

Negotiating the ‘in-between’ within ethnographic fieldwork

This panel discusses the ethnographer’s identity negotiation process during long-term fieldwork illustrating how they shift ‘in-between’ their multiple identities. Based on reflexive accounts of ethnographers who have conducted fieldwork in diverse sites: United States (Yagi), United Kingdom (Suttill), Indonesia (Shimoda) and Hong Kong (Zhu), the aim is to demonstrate how identities are negotiated in relation to the researcher-respondent relationship, which is the basis of effective ethnographic work (Jansson and Nikolaidou 2013). Many studies have discussed the importance of the researcher’s role on data collection (Breen 2007), tactics for rapport building with respondents (Mahoney, 2007), identity politics of difference (Giampapa, 2011) and power dynamics between researcher and participants (Nelson 2020). However, studies on researcher-respondent relationships from the perspectives of how they influence each other, and the complexity of these relationships, are rare within the organisation and management studies literature (Cunliffe & Karunanayake 2013, p. 366). By demonstrating, comparing and contrasting the reflections of ethnographers, we aim to go beyond a specific field site to explore holistically our understanding of researcher identity negotiation and illustrate the factors which influence the identity work of researchers in ethnographic fieldwork.