‘Researching Up’ in a Geopolitical Field: Positionality, Access and Belonging in Nepal's Hydropower Sector

ABSTRACT Access to elite actors is central to researching powerful institutions yet remains uneven and difficult to secure. This paper examines how geopolitical relations shape elite access and how researchers are read and interpreted in politically sensitive contexts. Drawing on fieldwork with hydropower policymakers and industry actors in Nepal, I show how regional geopolitical dynamics shaped my ability to engage powerful institutional actors. My positionality as an Indian female researcher affiliated with an elite Global North university was central to how access was negotiated, enabling and constraining engagement in shifting and contradictory ways. Three dynamics were particularly important: geopolitical suspicion linked to India–Nepal relations; institutional affiliation as a source of credibility and reassurance; and situated familiarity through shared ‘pahari’ identity that at times altered how my national identity was understood. These dynamics shaped whether I was seen as credible, harmless or potentially threatening, influencing access and the degree of openness possible in research encounters. The paper argues that in geopolitically sensitive contexts, elite access is not determined solely by formal gatekeeping or researcher positionality but emerges through participants' interpretations of the researcher, including their perceptions of political alignment, credibility and risk. In doing so, it reframes elite access as an affective process through which geopolitical relations are lived and felt in research encounters, shaping both engagement and the knowledge that becomes possible to produce.