Producing Feminist Research with Maria do Mar Pereira

Hannah Curran-Troop’s reflections on the day

Back in December, we had the pleasure of hosting Professor Maria do Mar Pereira for our event, Producing Feminist Research: Dilemmas of doing Feminist Ethnography and Research with our own Communities. This session transpired to be a really supportive space where we talked openly about the obstacles and sticky moments of conducting this kind of feminist research. We spoke about the various quandaries of studying our own communities, and how having empathy and shared experiences with participants, as well as the motivation to represent these communities in a respectful and considered way, often presents barriers in the ways in which we generate critique as researchers. Maria conceptualised the ‘messy’ nature of these kinds of research environments, suggesting that exploring ‘messiness’ can offer a productive means of forming a critical voice in these spaces. I found this concept extremely generative and will certainly be discussing this in my own reflective chapter on researching a feminist community I am connected to.