You’ve probably come across the term “researcher positioning” in methods texts or heard it thrown around in doctoral seminars, and perhaps wondered what al the fuss is about. Positioning might sound like one of those unnecessarily complicated concepts but actually, it’s pretty straightforward once you get your head around it. More importantly, it gets at something fundamental about how research actually works in practice.

At its heart, researcher positioning is about acknowledging that you, the researcher, are not some neutral, invisible observer floating above your research like a disembodied brain. You’re a real person with a particular background, experiences, theoretical commitments, and ways of seeing the world. All of your experiences and understandings shape how you approach your research, what questions you ask, what you notice in your data, and how you make sense of it all. Researcher positioning is simply the practice of being explicit and thoughtful about these influences.

Think of it this way. If ten different researchers studied much the same topic using the same methods, they may well produce identical studies. But they could equally also ask slightly different questions, focus on different aspects of the phenomenon, and come to somewhat different conclusions. That’s not a problem or a sign that research is hopelessly subjective. It’s just a reality of doing research involving human understandings. The key is being aware of and open about the perspective you’re bringing to the table.

Here’s two things to think about in relation to positioning.

The insider-outsider

One of the most common ways researchers think about positioning is through an insider-outsider lens. Are you studying a context you’re already part of, or are you coming in from the outside? Each position comes with its own advantages and challenges.

If you’re an insider studying your own workplace, professional community, or cultural group, you bring valuable knowledge and understanding that an outsider might take years to develop. You know the unwritten rules, you understand the language you can pick up on subtle dynamics that might be invisible to someone new to the setting. You’re likely to be trusted more readily by participants because you’re one of them. But being an insider also means you might take certain things for granted or struggle to see patterns that seem obvious to someone with fresh eyes. You might also face tricky ethical questions about double roles and relationships.

Coming in as an outsider means you see things differently. You notice stuff that insiders consider so normal it’s invisible. You can ask naive questions that actually turn out to be quite profound because they challenge assumptions. But you also face challenges in gaining access, building trust, and understanding the context you’re studying. You might misinterpret things or miss important nuances.

Alas, it’s really not that simple.  The insider-outsider distinction isn’t as clear-cut as it might seem. You’re never completely one or the other. You might be an insider in some ways and an outsider in others. A teacher researching teaching is an insider to the profession but might be an outsider to the specific school or subject area they’re studying. A researcher who shares the ethnicity of their participants might still differ from them in terms of class, gender, age, or professional status. And the ways in which you work during your research might affect your positioning too, you’re sometimes inside, sometimes outside, often both at once. These multiple, overlapping positions matter because they all influence how you relate to your research.

Your epistemological commitments 

Beyond the personal and social dimensions of positioning, there’s another layer that’s equally important: your epistemological stance. This is about how you think about knowledge, what it is, how it works and what tradition you’re working within. This might sound abstract, but it has very concrete implications for how you design and conduct your research.

Are you working from a positivist perspective, treating social phenomena as things that can be measured and explained by identifying causal relationships? Or are you more interpretivist, seeing social reality as constructed through human interaction and meaning-making? Perhaps you’re working within a critical tradition, viewing knowledge as inherently tied to power relations and seeing research as a tool for challenging injustice. Maybe you’re drawing on post-structural thinking that questions grand narratives and stable categories. Each of these positions leads you to ask different kinds of questions and value different kinds of data and analytic approaches.

Your epistemological positioning shapes everything about your research design. It influences whether you’re looking for generalisable patterns or deep understanding of particular cases. It affects how you think about what counts as a convincing argument. It determines whether you see yourself as discovering pre-existing truths or co-constructing knowledge with your participants. These aren’t just philosophical niceties to mention briefly in your methods chapter. They’re absolutely fundamental to how you actually go about your research.

The tricky bit is that when you start on a doctorate you may not have thought a lot about epistemological commitments. You might have chosen methods that feel right for your question without fully articulating the view of knowledge that underpins them. Or you might be trying to blend approaches that actually rest on incompatible assumptions about how knowledge works. Taking time at the start of your research programme to clarify your epistemological positioning helps you make coherent choices throughout your research. And then defend them convincingly.

When you write about your positioning in your thesis introduction or methods chapter, you’re essentially laying your cards on the table. You’re telling your readers, this is where I’m coming from personally, socially, and philosophically. This is the tradition I’m working within. These are the assumptions I’m making about knowledge and reality. Here’s how all of this has shaped my research design and analysis. This kind of transparency doesn’t weaken your thesis. It strengthens it by helping examiners understand and evaluate your work on its own terms.

Why bother with positioning?

Now this might all sound like a lot of navel-gazing. Why spend time thinking about your own positioning when you could be getting on with actually doing the research? Well here’s why it matters.

First, being thoughtful about your positioning makes your research more rigorous. When you’re aware of your assumptions and biases, you can actively work to question them rather than unconsciously letting them drive your analysis. You can make deliberate choices about method and interpretation rather than just going with what feels natural to you. You can seek out disconfirming evidence and alternative explanations rather than just seeing what you expect to see.

Second, it makes your research more transparent and trustworthy. When you’re explicit about your positioning, readers can better understand and evaluate your work. They can see where you’re coming from and make their own judgements about how that might have shaped your findings. This doesn’t undermine your credibility as a researcher. It does the opposite. It shows you’re thoughtful and honest about the research process.

Third, it’s ethically important. Research relationships involve power dynamics, and being aware of your position helps you navigate these more thoughtfully. Are you in a position of authority relative to your participants? Does your institutional affiliation or professional status create certain expectations? How might your identity affect how participants relate to you and what they’re willing to share? Thinking through these questions helps you conduct research that’s more respectful and less likely to inadvertently exploit or misrepresent people.

Finally, engaging seriously with researcher positioning can enhance your analysis. Your particular perspective isn’t just a source of bias to be managed. It’s also a resource. Your experiences, knowledge, and theoretical commitments allow you to see things and make connections that someone positioned differently might miss. The goal isn’t to eliminate your perspective but to use it thoughtfully and reflexively.

Positioning in practice

So how do you actually do this positioning work? It starts with some honest self-reflection. What drew you to this research topic? What assumptions do you hold about it? What’s your relationship to the context or community you’re studying? What theoretical frameworks shape how you think about your topic? How might your identity, experiences, and social position influence how you approach the research?

Many researchers find it helpful to write a positioning statement early in their research journey. This isn’t something you necessarily include in full in your final thesis, though you’ll draw on it when you write your introduction and/or methodology chapter. It’s more of a thinking tool to help you become more aware of what you’re bringing to the research.

But positioning isn’t a one-and-done exercise. It’s an ongoing reflexive practice throughout your research. As you collect and analyse data, keep asking yourself: Why am I noticing this particular pattern? What assumptions am I making? How might I be interpreting this differently if I had a different background or theoretical lens? Keeping a research journal can be really valuable for this kind of ongoing reflection.

The point isn’t to achieve some impossible state of complete objectivity or to apologise for having a perspective. You can’t step outside your own life, and nor should you. The point is to be thoughtful, honest, and deliberate about the perspective you’re bringing to your research. That’s what researcher positioning looks like.