Remaining in the Field: The Vulnerability Paradox of Native Member Ethnography

Abstract

While traditional ethnography typically involves researchers entering the field and then leaving it, but at-home ethnography and autoethnography challenge this norm as researchers remain in their native environments after the research period has ended. This dual role creates a paradox of vulnerability for both the subjects and the researchers; vulnerability stems from their dual role and the ethical dilemmas of maintaining confidentiality and trust while being part of the organization. This study explores the concept of vulnerability in ethnographic research, with a focus on researchers who remain in the field after the research has ended as full members of the organisations they studied. Our study identifies a significant vulnerability experienced by ethnographic researchers who remain in the field after research closure and emphasizes the unique challenges faced by researchers who must navigate their roles as both insiders and outside observers, leading to a state of limbo and increased vulnerability. We discuss the ethical challenges of conducting research in one’s own organization, including the potential for increased sensitivities and the difficulty of separating researcher and professional identities. We reflexively and reflectively analyze our own research diaries to illustrate the complexities of remaining in the field, and we present three vignettes that highlight the emotional and ethical considerations faced as researchers remaining in the field after research closure. This study contributes to the emerging discussion on researcher vulnerabilities with autoethnography and at-home ethnography as methods. It suggests that understanding and addressing these vulnerabilities is crucial for the ethical and effective practice of ethnographic research. The paper calls for further examination of the reciprocal vulnerability experienced by autoethnographic and at-home ethnographic researchers and their subjects, emphasizing the need for more study, guidance, and support for researchers in these roles.

Introduction

Ethnographic methods have been used by researchers to examine people in vulnerable situations. In simplified terms, traditional ethnography methods start with the researcher entering the field, performing the research, and ending the research by leaving the field. Through learned sensitivities, ethnographic researchers approach the research field as outsiders who observe and may even act as a part of the researched group during the time of research; research practices include revisiting collected data with subjects to ensure accurate understandings and ensure transparency (Tsai et al., 2016). Ethnographers are advised to exercise caution with research subjects during data collection and in the authorship of their work (Tolich, 2010). Researchers must also consider their position in the field and the process of leaving it behind once the researcher has ended (Alvesson & Ybema, 2009); after the research is completed, the researcher is expected to withdraw from the field, to leave it behind, and to focus on authoring the study to report findings.

Increasingly, researchers are conducting ethnographic fieldwork in their native areas through ethnographic methods such as at-home ethnography and autoethnography. The use of these two ethnographic methods implies that the researcher is in the field prior to the commencement of the research as a field member with a legacy status and thus will remain in the field after the research period has been completed. This, in turn, means that the accepted ethnographic expectation of leaving the field after the research ends do not apply to researchers who study their own organisations. This state of remaining in the field post-research creates tensions with both methodological and theoretical underpinnings that are embedded within ethnography. The act of remaining in the field after research closure creates a metaphoric state of limbo for the researcher; this state of limbo contributes to researcher vulnerability. Prior research indicates that researchers utilize reflexive and reflective practices to examine both the field and themselves (Leppälä et al., 2024). Notable examples include studies of reflecting on one’s academic workplace while conducting academic research as intentional at-home ethnography (Leppälä et al., 2024; Poutanen et al., 2021), or cases of later recognition that research was an act of at-home ethnography (e.g., Järventie-Thesleff et al., 2015).

There is a paradox between the vulnerability of research subjects and the ethnographer’s role as a native member of the researched field. Tolich (2010) cautioned researchers who adopt ethnographic methods to not betray colleagues, friends, and family by portraying them in personal narratives. However, successful ethnographers may protect the anonymity of those they study; participants and informants will remain identifiable to themselves, which may result in private or community shame (Ellis, 1995; Murphy & Dingwall, 2007). While the sensitivities regarding the privacy and anonymity of research subjects have been acknowledged (e.g., Lapadat, 2017), researchers who remain in the field post-research face unresolved questions about their own sensitivities and privacy, as well as their dual role as both organizational members and researchers. In these cases, the researcher is an identified informant in the research papers and the as the researcher remains in the field after research, the identities and stories of the researcher and the researched remain exposed after the research has ended. We lean on the definition of vulnerability by Honkasalo (2019), who underscores the significance of not merely perceiving vulnerability as a static condition or state, but as an evolving and interconnected phenomenon that influences human interactions and societal frameworks that considers the risks and experiences of disclosing research results to one’s own network. Vulnerability, therefore, is a dynamic phenomenon and includes both positive and negative aspects. Negative aspects include stress and uncertainty related to the unknown impact of their work on themselves and others; positive experiences include aspects such as attaining multifocal and nuanced understandings of the shared environment. At its best, the positive perspectives of vulnerability plays a critical role in the cultivation of empathy, solidarity, and provides guidance related to ethical considerations across diverse academic disciplines.

In this qualitative study, we focus our examination of researcher vulnerability on two types of ethnographic methods: autoethnography and at-home ethnography; we explore researcher vulnerability through examinations of our own autoethnographic and at-home ethnographic research diaries, texts, and post-research reflections; we provide three vignettes written as reflexive exercises of our perceived vulnerabilities as we remainers in the organisations we had previously studied. We contribute to the emerging academic discourse of autoethnographer and at-home ethnographer vulnerability.

This paper proceeds as follows. The next section, we review theoretical insights into modern ethnographic methods and the concept of researcher vulnerability. We then describe our methodology, including methods of analysis. In the next section, we discuss the findings. Finally, we conclude with a summary and suggest avenues for future research.

The Theoretical Pairing of Ethnographic Methods and Researcher Vulnerability

Autoethnography

Broadly, autoethnography as a concept refers to both the method and the product of researching, as well as the act of the researcher reflexively assessing the personal, lived experiences related to the research fieldwork and the inter-relationship of these elements to the examined culture (Ellis, 2004; Ellis et al., 2011). Autoethnography is defined in this paper as an ethnographic statement that connects the ethnographer to the text in an autobiographical manner (Learmonth & Humphreys, 2016); autoethnography is described as the strongest form of observation (Fingerroos & Jouhki, 2018). Further extending this description, autoethnography is described as the art and science of representing one’s life in relation to cultural expectations, beliefs, and practices (Adams & Herrmann, 2023), a dialogic and exploratory inspection of the relationship between self, culture, and others. According to Adams, Homan Jones, and Ellis (2021), the concept of autoethnography consists of three characteristics or activities: ‘auto’ (self); ‘ethno’ (culture), and ‘graphy’ (representation/writing/story). To be defined as an “autoethnography”, the outcome of the research should include all three of these characteristics (Adams et al., 2021).

The core of autoethnographic research is the practice of reflexivity (Ellis et al., 2011), as the socio-cultural interpretation of the relationship between self and society distinguishes autoethnography from other forms of writing of the self, such as autobiographies and memoirs (Rannikko & Rannikko, 2021). Adams and Herrmann (2023) define competent autoethnography as an outcome of the narrative’s verisimilitude built through the author’s emotional integrity, as ethnographic knowledge is formed through embodied knowledge and empathy. Through autoethnography, the researcher aims to bring to consciousness issues that arise during encounters between experiencers; these events may be challenging to find expressions for or even consist of situations for which no verbal equivalents can be found (Aromaa & Tiili, 2018). Adams and Herrmann (2023) specify that a good autoethnographer focuses their research efforts on either one event or experience or on several experiences around the same topic or theme. Autoethnography is a suitable method when studying delicate and traumatic topics (Berry, 2012), including the loss of trust in institutional settings (Kosonen & Ikonen, 2022).

Romero (2024) has studied autoethnography as a method of teaching and learning. In her study, she found that ethical considerations are at the forefront of the method. Further, Romero (2024) suggests that during the exploration of profoundly personal and sometimes triggering experiences, considering issues or (re)traumatisation and/or vicarious traumatisation remains paramount. Kennedy (2020) used autoethnography to process and understand a doctoral candidate’s vulnerability as a novice researcher. In his study, Harju (2023) noted that there is a major difference between two strands of autoethnographic writing: in the strand he calls the ‘mainstream’ or ‘majoritarian’ one, the structurally ‘powerful’ academic attempts to use various self-reflexive strategies to move toward greater vulnerability whereas the minority’, writing in the self serves the purpose of bringing otherwise excluded knowledge and perspectives into academic conversations, thus forcing them to be considered as social issues.

At-Home Ethnography

At-home ethnography is also a challenging form of research (Gosovic, 2018) where the researcher investigates their own environment or organisation, applying ethnographic methods to the lived realities of a site where they hold natural membership. This approach includes ethnographic and autoethnographic methods and incorporates the voices of other participants to provide first-, second-, and third-person perspectives (Brummans & Hwang, 2018). The at-home ethnographic approach allows for a deeper understanding of cultural practices and social interactions in familiar settings, facilitating a more intimate and nuanced analysis (Pink, 2021). By leveraging the researcher’s own lived experiences, at-home ethnography can reveal the subtleties of examined life that might be overlooked in traditional ethnographic studies (Blommaert & Dong, 2010). Furthermore, at-home ethnography challenges the conventional boundaries between the researcher and the researched, and thus, promotes reflexivity and critical self-awareness (Holmes, 2020).

Traditional ethnographic roles are expanded, as at-home ethnographers find themselves as a researcher within a familiar site and with familiar people, and with a legacy role within this construct. Unlike participant researchers who are temporary members of an organisation, such as consultants (Vesa & Eero, 2014), at-home ethnographers have an innate understanding of the organisation and its interactions (Järventie-Thesleff et al., 2016); this causes the researcher to refine their how they understand and relate with the familiar site, their own roles, and the roles and dynamics of the other participants. There are both methodological challenges and opportunities associated with conducting at-home ethnographic research as the at-home ethnographic researcher wears two hats at once; one hat is that of a researcher and the other hat is as a natural member of the field (Leppälä et al., 2024), collecting and combining reflexive autoethnographic data of selves as full-member participants with research participant data. This dual role of the at-home ethnographer requires the researcher to push the boundaries of knowledge and identity construction (Järventie-Thesleff et al., 2016). Strategies for maintaining rigor and objectivity in at-home ethnography need to be explored during all phases of the research; this includes placing an emphasis on the unique advantage that researchers can bypass the initial phase of familiarizing themselves with the research site.

Alvesson (2009) emphasized the importance of reflexivity and self-awareness in navigating these challenges and called for a balance between the researcher’s natural immersion and the need for analytical detachment. Alvesson (2009) discussed the concept of “closeness,” the intimate knowledge and personal involvement of the researcher in the setting being studied. This closeness to the data and subjects of study leads to the ethical dilemma of ethnographic research, how to protect the ‘others’ of the study. This status of being close has its advantages in that it allows the researcher to engage in meaningful research more swiftly, leveraging their pre-existing knowledge and intimate understanding of the environment to produce insightful and robust findings. After the research ends, at-home ethnographers remain in their organisational role among those they have studied. At-home ethnographical research is presented as a multivocal report, with both voices of the participants and of the researcher present in the data and its analysis and discussion. The innate closeness of the researcher to the site can provide rich, detailed insights but the researcher status may pose risks, such as researcher bias during the interpretation of the data, and lapses in critical distancing to the research materials (Alvesson, 2009).

Vulnerability

Vulnerability arises from the risk and experience of being wounded either physically or mentally, and it includes both positive and negative aspects (Honkasalo, 2019). Gilson (2018) describes vulnerability as openness to being affected and to the affecting of others, determined by concrete social circumstances. Vulnerability is multidimensional and is composed of temporal, local, relational, and structural dimensions (Virokangas et al., 2020). Vulnerability may manifest when realised risks and unmet expectations lead to tangible experiences (Nienaber et al., 2015). Hamm et al. (2024) stated that social relationships always involve the potential for harm, since interactions between agentic actors can lead to situations where one party may act (or fail to act) in ways that produce affects to the other. This interdependence is complicated by uncertainty, brought by social or institutional pressures to behave and act in certain ways, yet in reality neither party can fully predict or control the actions of another (Hamm et al., 2024).

Aberasturi-Apraiz et al. (2020) studied researcher vulnerability through collaborative autoethnography. The authors suggested that collaborative autoethnography has been instrumental in analyzing researchers’ vulnerability, particularly concerning the types of concerns, limitations, and tensions experienced in academia and research. By incorporating post-qualitative and artistic perspectives, collaborative autoethnography provided the opportunity to maintain a collaborative relationship with the Other, in this case, fellow research team members. Through this method, researchers were able to gain deeper insights into themselves in collaboration with others. In other academic discourse connecting vulnerability and ethnographic forms, Lapadat (2017) focused on researcher vulnerability. Lapadat et al. (2017) examined the perspective of the autoethnographer as an author and examined the act of exposure of oneself in the text. In this discussion, the aspects of researchers who remained in the field after the ethnographic research was completed were not examined. Likewise, Järventie-Thesleff et al. (2016) reported that at-home ethnographers found that their native role, personal experiences, and history with the researched site played a significant role in understanding the cultural context, and also found that the practitioners-turned researchers did not consider their research to be at-home ethnography until after the active research period was over. However, although these (ibid.) examinations of researcher identity caused the situation of boundary-balancing as practitioner and researcher both during research and in the authorship of the results; this in turn may cause vulnerability to present as an integration of conformist, sceptic, and critic. In the cases described in Järventie-Theseff et al. (2016), the at-home ethnographic researchers left their respective organisations and the paper did not discuss the phenomenon of remaining in the organisation after the ethnographic research was completed (ibid).

Methodology

Methods

For this paper, we drew from our experiences of working and functioning within the field, which we simultaneously examined as researchers. Independently, and without prior knowledge of each other’s activities, we conducted three separate qualitative studies of three different organisations from practice theoretical and trust perspectives during our doctoral studies. We were full members of the organizations we researched, and our employers permitted us to conduct research within their organisations without imposing any requirements or reporting duties and our researcher status was known to all participants. These cases and our perspectives as researchers therein are the basis for this paper.

We each kept detailed field diaries of our research period, including reflective and reflexive diaries. We also turned to both literature and our research diaries to examine the paradox of full-member ethnographer vulnerability after the active research period and research closure. Our reflections on researcher vulnerability emerged during this current research, and collegial discussions on qualitative research deepened our understanding of this concept. Each author has experience in ethnography and full-member ethnographic methods (autoethnography and at-home ethnography) within an organisation. We shared similar backgrounds, having long work histories and entering academic life as non-traditional, adult students with extensive experience as practitioners.

Analysis

This qualitative research employs inductive reasoning (Mantere & Ketokivi, 2010) and thematic analysis (Clarke & Braun, 2019; Ozuem et al., 2022) to systematically explore and interpret data derived from our autoethnographic and at-home ethnographic field diary entries which we paired with peer-to-peer discussions. Through the inductive, thematic analysis, researchers can identify, review, define, and name recurrent themes; the themes can be used to report research findings (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Thematic analysis is a flexible and robust method for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns within data, allowing for analysis without pre-existing theoretical frameworks (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2019). The primary objective of thematic analysis is to extract meaningful insights from the researcher’s personal experiences and reflections (Ellis et al., 2011). Inductive reasoning (Mantere & Ketokivi, 2013), in turn, facilitates a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the data, capturing the complexity of personal and cultural experiences. We noted that there can be challenges in the drawing definitive conclusions as a researcher deeply immersed in the context, as well as in feeling a sense of closure to the research once it has finished (Alvesson, 2009); therefore, we employed two theoretical frameworks to our data analysis and also performed reflective and reflexive discussions between ourselves.

Through an inductive and thematic analysis of our researcher field diary entries and peer-to-peer reflexive discussions, we found the overarching theme of researcher vulnerability. Researcher vulnerability rose during the post-research period when we remained in the field as a full member participants as we vacated our role of researcher. We found that we experienced researcher vulnerability independently of one another, and while this phenomena could be present during research, the realisation and experience of remaining in the field created states of vulnerability.

Vignettes for Data Presentation

We present the data as vignettes gathered from our research field diary entries from periods accounting for during and after the research phases. The purpose of using vignettes is to provide entry points to complex research questions, selectively stimulating elements of the research topic (Kandemir & Budd, 2018). Descriptive vignettes can be used as a narrative form to present research findings (Erickson, 2012), offering a verbal illustration of the reported phenomenon. In autoethnographic studies, vignettes describe researcher-generated anecdotal data (Pitard, 2016), which might otherwise be challenging to communicate. Barter and Renold (1999) stated that vignettes in social research allows for: the exploration of contextualized, the clarification of judgments, and the exploration of a less personal and less threatening method to explore sensitive topics.

Demetriou (2023) suggests that vignettes should be considered in an expanded way as something that, in linking the field to the writing, continues to develop in time and across spaces as well as considered as a method of discussing with others; it also expands across disciplines and across academic and other fields. As Mantere and Ketokivi (2013) emphasise the importance of idealisation and contextualisation in inductive reasoning, to enhance the credibility and depth of thematic analysis, we added brief contextual information about the individual researchers and their research sites for the reader to ground themselves to the story prior to the vignettes. Our vignettes provide a description of the unfolding phenomena of researcher vulnerability from our own reflective and reflexive perspectives. Vignettes are presented in this paper in italics.

Findings

Vignettes 1–3

In the first vignette, researcher Kosonen reflects on events as she researched her workplace environment in a higher education setting. She worked as a junior lecturer while collecting the data of her doctoral dissertation.

“What are you going to tell them about us?”, they asked me. I’m in the coffee room at work, on a break, telling my colleagues that I’m delighted to have been accepted to present my dissertation results at the conference. Six months ago, they all attended events where I collected data for my research. The top manager in the organisation has been very positive and supportive of my research, so I had no idea that anyone else would be sceptical. That is why the question that was asked surprised me. I feel that the questioner doubts my abilities as a researcher. Mentally, I feel as if I have been pushed. Everyone in the room looks at me, and it seems difficult to answer. After this incident, my behaviour changed, and I started to be wary of situations where I talked about my research in front of members of my organisation. How can I ever publish my results without being attacked by my colleagues?

Here, we see that Kosonen’s role as the worker is accepted, but her role as a researcher is questioned; while the coworkers are unsure and potentially feel threatened, Kosonen is met with self-doubt as a researcher and as a peer. She ponders the future, and the end of the research period when results are disseminated, she wonders how her coworkers will react to her then, especially if the suspicions and aggressions would increase. She shields her researcher-self from the others to blend back into the role of staff member only.

This shielding of self is also realised in Ikonen’s research, as she explains in the second vignette. Ikonen researched an association in which she was a long-term and voluntary full member. The topic of her research interviews was trust between the members and the leader, and the research also touched on topics such as executive decision-making power. The salaried Executive Director was new in the position, and at the time of the interview he had been at his post for less than 3 years. He was enthusiastic and worked beyond his working hours. Both during and after the research, Ikonen found that the actors of the association were interested in the research and were looking forward to hearing the results. Ikonen describes the feelings towards the data gathering:

I felt confused as I got to know so much more than the other members, though I was a board member myself at that time. I was quite surprised by their deep feelings and opinions about leaders. I was also…I felt I was trusted to keep all that I heard secret. That is why I was so upset when I was treated publicly, as I knew their detailed stories and could use my understanding within the organisation. At the beginning of my research, I had no idea that my relationship with the interviewees would permanently change. Later, I realised that those relationships would never be the same because of what I now knew. I have met some of my interviewees on totally different occasions, and I still have the same feeling that they are keeping me a researcher. One of them seems to think we are close friends now, and the other is unwilling to discuss things related to that association. It appears that I would always stay in the field.”

I conducted research interviews using an at-home ethnographic approach in an organisation I had been a member of for a long time. I interviewed the executive director and the chairman of the organisation’s board in pairs. The interview revealed the Board President’s concerns about the Executive Director’s overtime working hours, which led us to touch on sensitive health issues. As a researcher, I kept this information to myself. Still, later, I found myself in awkward situations when the board chairman began questioning how I used the information I had obtained in the research.

While withdrawing from the field but still staying there, I found myself in many vulnerable situations. I was unable to be myself and relaxed in meetings where I was expected to share my ideas and expertise. For example, the Executive Director also later referred to the issues raised during the interview in public and expected me to comment on them, even though the Chairman of the Board was not present. I was challenged to discuss the research interviews with other members of the Association in the meetings. Still, if neither informant who participated in the research interview was present, I could not say anything on my behalf from a research ethics point of view. I started to be seen as odd because my silence was not linked to the research. As time passes, it can also be challenging for a researcher to remember what was discussed in a confidential research interview and what was later brought up in public.

As a full member of the studied organisation, Ikonen had the trust of the members and access as a researcher to interview powerful stakeholders in the organisation to which she belonged. During the interviews, the respondents’ familiarity may have led them to disclose personal health information that Kosonen felt should not have been disclosed. In this case, the organisation may have revamped the reason for research as to being an informant for the organisation, even though this was not the case.

Leppälä researched an organisation in which she, was a long-term full member employee, and worked as an R&D project manager simultaneously to working on her PhD. Leppälä, as the researcher, interviewed her colleagues about innovation sub-projects and also worked within the project itself. Both during and after the research, she found that her colleagues were not interested in the research she was doing, as it was not from their engineering discipline. Still, they came to interviews, and even themselves suggested that they could be interviewed. These wishes were not granted, as she found out the interviews were seen by some as a place to air grievances and perhaps her research was an express lane to HR. However, during the interviews, personal views and examples related to the project work were presented. She reflected on the interviews:

I felt as though I was the keeper of the privy purse at times; people would confide their work histories, their deep feelings and convictions about their work, but also provide stunning examples of how they felt wronged, whether it be not getting a position they wanted, having funds cut, or having to work with someone they deemed to be a difficult party. Although we only discussed these things during a “standard” interview, not later, these were still spoken words that, in most certainty, would not make it to my ears in any other case. I set the meetings; I asked the questions, the rest of the information, and their personal narratives, and they volunteered. “Well, you know how it is”, they would say, but I prodded farther, so my assumptions or extensive experience in this workplace would cloud anything. Then they went into such a depth of detail, and the drama unfolded. After my research ended, everyone had the opportunity to review what I had added to the final paper, but no one took advantage of this – however, participants became coworkers again.

I knew their work “secrets”, their other secrets – I knew what made them tick and what made them upset – veiled events I had not known before, and now, after the research was done, this information had become a part of our history, and it was my obligation to box it away - but it was a burden to bear.

“You aren’t going to report to anyone I told you those things, are you?” was a common question if I met people in closed spaces such as the privacy of an elevator ride. I realised that as they opened up to confide, even within the boundaries of research, our relationship before and the relationship after the interview was different.

I also viewed my own work and status differently. When people transferred to other departments of left altogether, I felt a deeper understanding and empathy, thinking I knew more than what the departure announcement told. I realised I would always be the researcher co-worker to those with whom I had interviews; I realised I would always be the visitor to their hidden thoughts – and I saw them every day in meetings, in the hall, in the canteen. I saw the exposed self of others and realised I would always be in the field.

Discussion

In our study, we found that autoethnography and at-home ethnography are research methods that can promote a significant vulnerability towards the author and others in their research. While the researcher addresses their own experiences, the method acquires reflection and relation to the culture and society where those experiences take place. The methods of autoethnography and at-home ethnography call for revealing the natural self as analytic researchers but include the responsibility to protect the researcher and those who are participants in the research.

In our three vignettes describing our independent withdrawals from the research field provided in this paper, we the researchers realise that although the active data collection fieldwork phase of research will end, we were not withdrawing from the field – we were just withdrawing from the role of the researcher in the field and returning to the previous, single role as a coworker with the retained membership obligations. We illustrate the differences between a traditional ethnographic approach to fieldwork and a new form of ethnographic research, such as autoethnography and at-home ethnography, in a simplified manner in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Simplified Schematic of the Arc of Traditional Ethnographic Role (Top) and that of a Full-Member Researcher (Bottom).

We conceptualize researcher vulnerability as a methodological tool for ethnographers, as it can facilitate nuanced and deeply insightful observations in even in the most sensitive contexts. Researcher vulnerability persists beyond the active research phase. During the dissemination of findings, researchers remain susceptible to emotional and ethical dilemmas, and there are multiple questions for the researcher to consider, such as: if the findings inflict harm upon others or to one’s self, what aspects of the research can be ethically published, and how will the effected community perceive these disclosures, or what the scope and nature of potential implications will be regarding future engagement with the community as the result of potential publications. . These are questions the researcher should record and consider throughout the research. Through the act of recording our lived experiences as autoethnographers and at-home ethnographers, we found that we included and exposed ourselves and the others within the reported narratives (Ellis, 2007; Lapadat, 2017).

Additionally, we noted that in the experiences of our peers, the events of research can weigh heavily as unusual events; they are tied to the member-as-a-temporary-researcher presence experienced earlier. The researcher holds pieces of information that may not have been either examined or explored earlier, such as the interview data contents. Although this was known beforehand in a transparent way, the participants and researchers are reminded of the sensitivities of research. The vulnerability inherent in the dual role of researcher and community member becomes an integral part of one’s professional history. It is challenging to reflect on the organization without re-experiencing the associated emotions, memories, and hidden insights.

The emotional and intellectual investment of the research may create a lasting impact, as the researcher may find it challenging to detach from the subjects and contexts studied as they are a part of their own organizational life. This ongoing vulnerability may shape the researcher’s interactions and decisions within the community. We all eventually left our sites of full member research for other opportunities to become full-time academic faculty. However, we note that as an autoethnographic or at-home ethnographic researcher, embracing vulnerability can lead to deeper insights but it can influence how and why you communicate your findings, the way you engage with peers, and the way ethical dilemmas are navigated and managed. Overall, vulnerability enhanced the quality of research through the promotion of a more ethical, empathetic, and insightful approach to the study of complex human and social phenomena.

Conclusions

This study contributes to the emerging discussion on researcher vulnerability in autoethnography and at-home ethnography. With this study, we provide contributions to the use of ethnographic methods in which the author is a full participant and remains in the field after the research has ended. Our study provides empirical evidence of the challenges and ethical considerations for the involved researcher who remains in the field after the research ends.

We presented three vingettes of autoethnographic and at-home ethnographic researcher vulnerability and examined the time after research when the researcher remains in the field after the research period had ended. We found that researchers experienced somewhat difficult experiences and emotions when they stayed in the organisations under investigation. Researchers could not break free from their dual role and were left vulnerable by the data they had collected and reported; the findings were similar for autoethnographic methods and at-home ethnographic methods of research.

We welcome further examinations of autoethnographer and at-home ethnographer vulnerability before, during, and after the fieldwork phases of data collection. In cases where the researcher is a natural member of the field under examination, particular interest in the reciprocal vulnerability experienced by all members involved in the ethnographical process would also be of interest. It would also be worth investigating cases when the researcher remains in the field after data collection and whether state of continued field membership affects the reporting of the study, as the researcher will have to “live” with the informants after publication of the research.