Feminist and postcolonial anthropology have long
stressed the need to perceive the researcher as a
positioned and biased subject (Collins 1991, Rosaldo
1989, Weston 1997) and it is, therefore, important to
reflect on one’s position in the field as well as the writing
practice. Today it has become standard practice to have at
least one student assignment on ‘positionality’ in
anthropology or human geography classes. However, in
my PhD research, the need to reflect upon my social and
cultural position was not only prescribed by social and
cultural anthropological practice but also demanded from
the interlocutors themselves—because I am a white
German woman researching Afrodescendent and Black26
identities. Also, I work with Black feminist activists, who
form part of a political community in which questions of
representation are a core theme. In this essay I reflect on
fieldwork experiences I made at conferences and with
research interlocutors and explain how I deal with my
own positionality as a white female researcher.