Positionality of Researchers Identifying with the "Global South": Shared Heritages, Ways of Thinking and Doing Research
Pooja Upadhyay, Sayan Bhattacharjee, Shreyasha Paudel · 2024
The field of HCI has welcomed diverse groups of researchers from various disciplines, and has adapted its knowledge production in response, such as via the incorporation of new theoretical and methodological approaches over time. Researchers' positionality seems to be an important aspect of the quality of scholarship and nature of knowledge production in a field. Through this Special Interest Group meeting, we aim to bring together a diverse set of scholars who may politically identify with a "global south", to discuss our positionality, and collective contributions to shaping knowledge production in HCI. Researchers identifying with the global south may have similar heritages, colonial and developmental histories. We are participating in an institution of science that has been historically uneven in terms of considering our contexts, as well as participation of researchers from our contexts in knowledge production. Through this collective discussion, we can attempt to understand how our positionality affects the way we "think" about research problems, and "do" our research. This may involve not only complex aspects of our identities, but also the resources we have access to, and the tangible methodological strategies we may adopt in research projects.