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Reflective Essays

Vol. 28 No. 3: Special Issue on Community-Engaged Scholars, Practitioners, and Boundary Spanners: Identity, Well-Being, and Career Development

A Call for “Insider” Community-Engaged Research: Considerations of Power Sharing, Impact, and Identity Development

  • Jey Blodgett
  • Ray Wolf
  • Lincoln Luna
  • Emory Nabih Spence
  • Kali Pulanco
  • Kobe Natachu
  • Shauna Tominey
Submitted
December 15, 2023
Published
2024-10-18

Abstract

The transgender community is rich with wisdom about how to live authentically, embrace duality, and embody intersecting identities, but our stories have been widely missing from or misrepresented in research. “Insider” community-engaged research offers a framework for boundary-spanning researchers to blend their “insider” and institutional knowledge to redress the harm of erasure through power sharing and community building. We offer vignettes from boundary-spanning researchers and participants to unpack the question, what becomes possible when research is conducted by, with, and for one’s own community? We detail the significant methods and processes that positively impacted participants and provide implications for fellow researchers.