The performative manifestation of a research identity: Storying the journey through poetry. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(2), Art. 39, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0802392 [Date of access: August 2

Abstract: Cultivating a research identity is an arduous journey. We are told to situate ourselves— know where we are coming from—but it is rare that people share their experiences and provide insight into a journey that indubitably shapes your research. In this performative piece, I shed light on my journey to a research identity. I provide an intimate portrayal of the blurring and temporal nature of research identities that is sometimes avoided and often unaccepted. In doing so, I hope to awaken new understandings and provide insight into what can be a direction(less) journey that leads to a sense of positioning. My journey is a tracing rendered through poetry-enhanced prose, which provides aesthetic sensibilities and the possibility for you to enter into and become caught up in our experience. As well, poetry and photography are bestowed in a way to illuminate the performative and dynamic place of my research identity and as a way to visualize and feel the story within this poetical telling. This is a manifestation of performative social science in which the voice is never solely mine and the identity is never conclusive as it continues to unfold and shift throug