Transparent Reflexivity: How to Exude Neutrality and Navigate Gatekeeping Through Shifting Positionality?

Gaining access to interviewees when carrying out qualitative research is a time-consuming, challenging undertaking.When face to face with gatekeepers, the work of convincing them to share their contacts and knowledge is not over, particularly when the research involves antagonistic groups and the researcher's positionality can be scrutinized in relation to that.In this article, based on my field work on hydraulic fracturing and its socioenvironmental impacts in Appalachia, I explore how my positionality shifted while being vouched for by funders and industry representatives.Additionally, I show how being probed due to my institutional affiliation, origin, and disciplinary background required me to strive to be perceived as neutral, in direct opposition to my feminist ethics, for the sake of ingratiating myself with gatekeepers.I problematize how this behavior was necessary as a first-year untenured faculty in the context of neoliberal academia, where I had to ensure meeting the funders' expectations and paving the way for potential future additional funding and job security.