Research as relationships: Bringing our humanness into research

One of the most enjoyable moments in my experience of being involved in research took place in 2015 at a research project planning workshop in Cape Town, South Africa. I was part of a research team that included Prof. Leslie Swartz, who was meeting with potential participants to discuss a new research project on sexuality and physical disability. At some point in the morning, I was in the process of explaining the proposed use of photovoice as a method for collecting data. Photovoice is a participatory action research method that invites research participants to create images that symbolise or reflected aspect of the topic in question, in this case their experience of themselves as a sexual person (see Hunt et al. 2020). Sexuality is typically regarded as a ‘sensitive’ research topic, requiring a thoughtfulness about the potential intrusive and shaming aspects of enquiring about matters of sexuality, and it was felt that inviting participants to set the agenda of a research interview prompted by the photographs they generated, would be a good way to proceed in exploring something personal and ‘sensitive’. In an effort to calm what we thought may be potential anxieties or insecurities of some of the participants about what they were being invited to photograph, I reassured everyone that we were not asking them to take images of a sexual nature. There were some nods of understanding. And then we heard one participant ask, ‘but why not?’ in a lovely, curious, ordinary way. Everyone laughed. ‘Yes, why not?’ another one said. This sparked a long, lively and enjoyable conversation about sex, sexuality, disability and representation, and created a bond between us all. It humanised a ‘sensitive’ topic, an experience of self, which is so often dehumanised.