Conducting fieldwork at and away from home: shifting researcher positionality with mobile interviewing methods

In this article, I begin from the premise that a meaningful difference exists between being a member of the same broad cultural group as your participants and actually sharing a personal history, a social network, and an assumed place-based investment in the future with them - as experienced by those scholars who conduct their research in the places they call home. I draw upon my own research experiences in order to argue that manipulating mobile interviewing methods can shift the positionality of both researchers-at-home and researchers-not-at-home. For researchers-at-home, these methods can help to move beyond the familiar to capitalize on the resources of the researchers' personal local knowledge in conversation with study participants. For researchers-not-at-home, mobile interviewing methods can help to build familiarity with local places and interpretations, while also facilitating access.