A queer experience: feelings and emotions in policing research with queer communities

• In Event: Roundtable: Methodological Issues & Challenges in Queer Criminological Resarch

Abstract

This paper presents my musings on being a queer researcher doing research with queer people in a considerably less than queer research space focused on policing. The central focus is on the most-often heteronormative affective domain of feelings and emotions. I have experienced many emotionally charged moments as a queer researcher in these spaces, including embarrassment, shame, discomfort, guilt, and sadness. In this paper, I talk through some of these moments and engage with some different theoretical concepts to expand my own thinking, and hopefully the thinking of other queer researchers, about how engaging actively with emotions and feelings might manifest more productive research moments. In this process, I reject the notion that it is necessary to control these emotions and feelings and talk through how these might instead be thought about as productive spaces, especially in the highly masculinist, heteronormative spaces of policing.

Author

• Angela Dwyer, University of Tasmania