Duo-ethnographic Methods: A Feminist Take on Collaborative Research

Step 0: Building Community, Acknowledging Difference

We recommend working with people with whom you have on-going relationships because duo-ethnography requires “shar[ing] and discuss[ing] critical differences” (Breault 2016:779). For our group, this collaboration began as a conference panel and based on various synergies, we agreed to meet again (Carney 2020; Dickinson 2020; Gálvez 2020; Gálvez et al. 2020; Garth 2020; Hardin 2020; Saldaña-Tejeda 2020; Valdez 2020; Yates-Doerr 2020). The following year we met for an extended workshop and developed an ethos for collaboration, which included a discussion of the kinds of resources, mentorship, and experiences we each sought and were willing to leverage. During this meeting, we also brainstormed whose voices were missing and then sought to bring those people in. We developed an email group where we regularly engaged, sharing opportunities or requests. Acknowledging our differences is an ongoing process of incremental reciprocity.

Step 1: Gather Participants, Compose Pairs

Megan first suggested using duo-ethnography because meeting in person was not feasible due to the COVID-19 pandemic; some members of the larger collaborative group opted in. Though duo-ethnography tends to privilege the language of dialog, we used a paired interview format to accommodate the group. Interviewer/interviewee positions were not fixed, as some pairs interviewed each other while others interviewed and were interviewed by different individuals. The interviews built on continuous conversation, text messages, phone calls, and co-writing. Based on the collective values of the group, we used hierarchical differences as a starting point for mutual exploration. This approach was only possible because of prior years of slow trust building and willingness to transform academic power relations.

Step 2: Develop Interview Guide

Working in a shared document, we developed a question outline to guide our video meetings. We then agreed if individuals preferred, they could use a variety of forms (i.e., poetics, prose, artwork). These diverse artifacts facilitated “imaginative thinking” about data that encouraged each of us to “excavate the temporal, social, cultural and geographic cartography” of our lives to make explicit our “assumptions and perspectives” (Sawyer and Norris 2009:2).

Step 3: Interviews, Co-writing

Each pair approached the interview differently. Some created space for one person to share, while others engaged in parallel talk. Each interviewer then wrote about the experience, foregrounding the story of their co-researcher. In writing about our co-researchers and in developing mutual interpretations through the interview, there was a collapsing of self in other that facilitated the transformative intent of the methodology. Each participant wrote up their pieces to protect anonymity for external audiences; then they shared it with their partner who responded, providing more details, answering questions, or requesting revisions to further protect anonymity. Public anonymity created space for vulnerability, which allowed us to vocalize the unequal academic power dynamics that have shaped the most intimate aspects of our lives.

Step 4: Co-analysis

Each author posted the finalized narrative in a shared google document for comment, which were used to generate cross-cutting themes. All comments were weighted equally and there were roughly the same number of comments from each contributor. Megan and Emily took the lead on organizing themes, which the whole group then narrowed down; in this process, new concerns arose that we discussed via email, which led to further insights. All participants edited and revised the whole document and then sought approval from individual authors (see Valdez et al. 2022).

Creating a coherent narrative was the most challenging component of our duo-ethnography because we each come from different social positions and because the process of doing the duo-ethnography itself held disparate meanings for each of us. The work of collective analysis requires a commitment to iterative interpretation, which is part of the reason the methodology is transformative. Through on-going exchange, further insights developed that only came about as reflected on our own differences and similarities.

Step 5: Ongoing Collaboration

Duo-ethnography requires on-going re-commitment that fosters continuous collaborations. The act of co-processing facilitated the transformation of our own individual experiences into a collective narrative in which we were all seen and heard. We now draw on that foundation to continue our collaboration.

Conclusion

Duo-ethnography requires that participants become the site of research itself, mutually and reciprocally exploring a particular topic. This group used duo-ethnography to deepen on-going collaborations in the context of pandemic conditions while researching those same conditions. By engaging in a dialog about these conditions, we gained a multi-positional perspective on our shared experiences. Methodologically, drawing out that multi-positionality transformed our own perspectives of our shared experiences while enhancing how we related to each other as collaborators. Duo-ethnography requires that trust and a degree of intimacy have already been established for the transformative effect to take place.

This short-take suggests procedures for duo-ethnography as a form of feminist research. This process can provide the basis for strong knowledge claims, as multiple parties have gone through a collaborative process to articulate agreed upon ways of understanding a particular phenomenon. When practiced in a group format, duo-ethnography can be a transformative research praxis—i.e., “an actively engaging process that is embodied, taught, learned and re-learned” (Davis and Craven 2016:168)––while producing scholarship that highlights singular phenomena from multiple standpoints (Harding 2004).