‘He came as a Boy and Returned as a Man’ – Field Research, Parenting and Masculinity in Northern Uganda

Abstract

Despite growing engagement with researchers’ positionalities and applications of reflexivity, considerations for researchers’ identities and experiences as parents remain under-developed. In particular, reflections about conducting research in the presence of one’s family continue to be a marginal topic in discussions about research methods, ethics and fieldwork. More recently, a small body of literature on the family dimensions of conducting fieldwork has begun to emerge. Most of this existing work relates specifically to the discipline of anthropology, and is often focused specifically on the experiences of mothers and motherhood. Significantly less has been written, however, about the experiences of fathers conducting fieldwork, and related questions about parenting, masculinity and field research. This article intends to counter these tendencies, by reflecting on my experiences of conducting field research in northern Uganda in the company of my wife and my two young children. I reflect on the practical and logistics aspects of this, and specifically on the methodological and ethical components of accompanied fieldwork, and the ways in which my family’s presence in the field impacted upon the knowledge production and research process. I specifically argue that conducting accompanied fieldwork carries immediate implications for researcher positionalities and relationalities with interlocutors. I specifically reflect on how my identity as a father shaped how I was perceived by my research participants, and how it enabled me to build new and different relationships with my interlocutors – thereby contributing to debates about positionality and reflexivity. Such transparent reflections, I hope, will be of interest for others embarking on field research within the presence of their families in the future, and seek to contribute towards a process of raising awareness, facilitating exchanges within the academy and increasing institutional support for accompanied fieldwork.