Beyond the fieldwork: the intersectional realities of the researcher

Despite aiming towards objectivity, researchers remain influenced by their intersecting identities (e.g. gender, age, origin) and by multiple overlapping contexts across scales (e.g. family, cultural, geographical, and temporal contexts). These factors shape how researchers interact with others, interpret observations, collect data, and draw conclusions. Drawing on my own fie work experience, this paper analyses how these factors manifest in practice through participant observation conducted in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It shows how my intersecting identities and contexts subjectively shaped my fieldwork experiences, influencing data collection and the interpretation of situations. These dynamics may lead to assumptions, biases, and ethnocentrism. This paper argues that such resulting subjectivities should not be treated as sources of distortion but as analytically meaningful elements of the research process. Reflexively engaging with them by acknowledging our own intersecting identities, those of others, and the contexts can support a more nuanced contextualization and a more grounded analysis of the social realities encountered in the field. This paper contributes by reframing researcher subjectivities as analytically meaningful elements of the research process. It shows how intersectional identities and contexts shape fieldwork interactions and observations, while highlighting the importance of continuous reflexivity.