The Space Between Healing and Trauma in Qualitative Research: Reflections on Fieldwork With Black Women Faculty

• In Event: Reflexivities, Positionalities, and Interrogations

Abstract

As an all-woman, (mostly Black women) research team, we reflect on a national study that exposed the pain and joy of Black women’s faculty life in academia. In this paper, incorporating Black feminist ideas, we create a dialogue between the research team and participants on how we collectively navigated the space between healing and trauma in qualitative data collection processes and how participants used their agency within the research process to chart a pathway for their own healing. Black women faculty members described healing in multiple areas of both their academic and personal lives. As a contribution to critical reflexivity practices, we considered whether and how qualitative research processes can be healing spaces, and when those spaces can perpetuate trauma.

Authors

• Rachelle Winkle-Wagner, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Lashawn Faith Washington, University of Oklahoma
  Presenting Author

• Paris D. Wicker, University at Buffalo - SUNY
  Presenting Author

• Khadejah Ray, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Bridget J. Goosby, University of Texas at Austin
  Presenting Author