Switching Hats: Positionality and the Practitioner-Researcher with Ally Grant

What happens when we enter a research interview carrying professional ways of listening, responding and making sense?In this episode of The Phenomenology Collective, we explore positionality as something that is not simply declared in a methodology chapter, but actively negotiated within the research encounter.We’re joined by Ally Grant, an experienced social worker and Professional Doctorate researcher at Anglia Ruskin University. Ally’s IPA research explores how statutory children and families social workers make sense of expressions of masculinity.Together, we consider what it means to interview participants from a familiar professional world while meeting them in a non-practice context. Ally reflects on the interconnected identities of person, practitioner and researcher—and whether the practitioner “hat” can ever truly be removed.In this episode, we discuss:How positionality shapes the research interview in real timeThe opportunities and risks of interviewing within a familiar professional worldThe difference between listening to respond and listening to understandWhether professional familiarity can create an illusion of understandingUsing the Social GRACES to explore visible, invisible, voiced and unvoiced identitiesThe role of presuppositional interviewing, reflexive journalling and supervisionWhy an interview that feels difficult may still contain rich experiential materialWhether practitioner identity should be managed, removed or embraced as part of interpretation