Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of researchers’ emotions in collaborative team fieldwork with people experiencing homelessness by using fieldnotes and follow-up discussions. It reveals how different team members do emotion work and how these emotions can yield important insights.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropological fieldwork always involves emotion work as well ‘people work’, especially when doing sensitive research with vulnerable social groups. In practice, fieldwork can never be 'an emotionless experience' (Spencer 1992) and the emotional experiences of fieldwork should not be relegated to something private, personal and almost secret (Davies & Spencer 2010; Lindholm 2007). Although taking participants’ emotions into account is fundamental to conducting sensitive ethnographic research, this paper also recognises that the researcher’s own emotions are a necessary part of research and need to be analysed. Researchers’ emotions constitute key cognitive/analytic resources and are a valid and powerful tool for understanding others. As important sources of information and tools of interaction, emotions can also be used as an additional layer of research information. Drawing on research experiences in a joint comparative research project (CSRP) on homelessness, this paper shows how fieldwork affects researchers in highly unpredictable and uncertain ways depending on their individual experiences and identities. It explores the role of researchers’ emotions while doing sensitive research with people experiencing homelessness and how this has an impact on the research team. The emotional impact of both fulfilling and distressing research experiences as well as the implications of role blurring in the field are considered. Specifically, fieldnotes and follow-up discussions are used to reveal how different team members do emotion work as well as handle emotionally charged experiences and how these emotions can yield important insights. Strategies for emotion management including debriefing, peer support and self-care strategies are also discussed.