Unity and difference: reflecting on research with LGBT people in prisons

• In Event: Roundtable: Queering Researchers' Identities

Abstract

Social scientists often research topics that resonate with us on a personal level, and it’s therefore unsurprising that many Queer Criminologists identify as LGBT. I arrived at my research topic through becoming more comfortable with my own bisexuality, and in turn, it was through this research that I gained the confidence to identify as transgender. In this paper I explore how my gender and sexual identities shaped my experiences in the field. I discuss the assumptions that my participants made, the questions that they had about my identity, and the choices that I made about revealing or concealing information about myself. I consider how being LGBT affected my relationships with my participants, and how, despite sharing a minoritised identity characteristic, we differed in terms of privilege and social location. As academics, our social characteristics affect the topics we choose, the way that we conduct our research, and the findings that we produce. I consider the importance of making our identities visible in our research, and the risks that accompany doing so.

Author

• Mia Harris, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford