Positionalities and Knowledge: Negotiating Ethics in Practice

In this article, I draw upon my experience of working on two research projects - one with young Muslim men (Hopkins, 2006) and one with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (Hopkins and Hill, 2006; Hopkins, in press) - in order to reflect critically upon the negotiation of ethics in practice. The paper charts two of the ethical issues which were central to these projects; concerning multiple positionalities, and different knowledges and understandings of ethical practices. Although neither of these projects constituted a fully participatory research approach, they were both designed and conducted with participatory values in mind, and the issues raised and discussed here are of particular relevance to research of this nature.