Religious positionalities and political science research in ‘the field’ and beyond: Insights from Vietnam, Lebanon and the UK

This article contributes to the growing literature on researcher reflexivity by broaching often-ignored issue of religious positionalities within political science, as well speaking methodological implications researching religion more broadly. We present and compare two autoethnographic case studies research politico-religious conflict in Vietnam Lebanon, exploring how a researcher’s religiosity presents unique fieldwork challenges, opportunities insights. then discuss ambivalence faced researchers highly secularised academic environment, thus blurring artificial dichotomy between ‘the field’ academy. Our reflections centre around three findings: (1) importance taking an intersectional approach which neither essentialises nor ignores aspects positionality, whilst also being sensitive spatial temporal shifts they interact with gender, ethnicity, class other identifiers; (2) perils apparent common ground participants (or lack thereof) building rapport negotiating degree insider status; (3) similarities differences suspicions partialism during academia.