Walking to See: Exploring the Spatiality of Race and One’s Positionality Through Datawalks

This article discusses how datawalks, a method of mobility that provides information about oneself in relation to space and others, can be used to research race through one’s embodied experience in space. Datawalks have often been used to explore experiences of minoritized rather than dominant groups and as a collaborative research-participant experience rather than a self-ethnographic endeavor. This article tackles these gaps by showing how datawalks can be used for researchers to address their positionalities within race relations. Drawing on datawalks the four authors did through parts of Rotterdam (the Netherlands), the article addresses how datawalks can (a) help researchers recognize and experience race in and through space and (b) engage with one’s positionality. This article points out the relevance of using datawalks as an in situ and in-movement method to capture the shape-shifting materiality of race in cities and to draw connections to structures of Whiteness in academia.