The reluctant researcher: reflexivity, engagement, and doing activist research in the Jordanian Badia

There is an increasing interest in epistemologies and methodologies that take seriously the importance of Indigenous, situated, and subaltern knowledges. Along with this, is an urgency to reflect on how to engage in these modes of knowledge creation, the tensions and challenges they elicit, and how to navigate them. Reflecting on my research journey in the Jordanian arid steppe with semi-nomadic Bedouin communities, this article discusses (1) How to navigate doing engaged research using extended epistemologies, (2) How to sit with the discomfort of fieldwork and the incoherence and in-betweenness that arises, (3) How to approach the disconnect between community needs and research and academic requirements. This article aims to contribute to building ethical research relationships and challenges current modes of engagement with community members, moving beyond viewing them as interlocutors but as epistemic counterparts. The article proposes that research processes should be co-creative, centring reciprocity and relationality.