Paper short abstract:

In this paper I reflect on my experiences of working with women activists who defend their territories against extractivist projects in Bolivia. Reflecting on my positionings, identities and emotions, I demonstrate how my own activist experiences helped me building bridges in the research process.

Paper long abstract:

There has been written extensively about combining activism and scholarship in social movement research in which the researcher politically aligns herself to a struggle for social change while working towards more horizontal and collective forms of knowledge production. A lot less is known about how activist and academic spaces and identities interconnect and merge into one another. In this paper I reflect on my research in Bolivia where I studied the activist trajectories of women from the TIPNIS territory and Tariquía nature reserve who defend their territories in the face of extractivist projects. My own activist experiences and the skills and knowledge that I have acquired through my involvement with movements for climate justice in Europe shaped my positionality in the field and helped me building bridges between me and the research participants. I benefitted from my knowledge about activist trauma and burnout and the facilitation of safer spaces in my main methods: acompañar (accompaniment as solidarity) and life history interviews. In my encounters with the women activists I drew upon these experiences and related emotional responses, in conscious and unconscious forms, affecting our relations and the research process in various ways. Likewise, these experiences, emotions and overlapping activist and academic identities shape my positionings within academia 'back home'. I argue that moving beyond the activist-academic binary and acknowledging the 'emotional dimensions' (Askins 2012) of doing research and activism is key in bringing about radical social change, in 'the field' and 'back home', in 'activist spaces' and 'academic spaces'.