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Nobody comes into research as a neutral observer, whether they're interviewing young people in Johannesburg or looking down a microscope in Leicester.
In the fourth episode of Difficult Conversations, Dr Kike Ladipo and Dr Gez Williams talk to Dr Diane Levine, whose research looks at how children and young people survive and thrive amid adversity, much of it with communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Diane explains what positionality means and why acknowledging who you are is only the start: the real work is changing how you do research because of it. She talks about why it matters just as much in STEM, from AI training data to clinical trials, how working with a colleague who became a traditional healer during her PhD changed the way she understood mental health, and why being an insider in a community isn't automatically better.
Her advice for researchers starting cross-cultural work is to be curious, be humble, listen for longer than feels comfortable, and when you make mistakes, own them and fix them. If you've ever wondered how your own background shapes the questions you ask, this conversation is a good place to start.
Show notes, links and resources: https://difficultconversationspodcast.com/episode-4-positionality/
