An ‘outsider within’: consideringpositionalityandreflexivityin research on HIV-positive adolescent mothers in South Africa

Using a feminist theoretical framework, this article reflects on the issues of power between ‘the researched’ and ‘the researcher’ and highlights the problematic of shared identities and dissimilarities. The article considers the epistemological challenges encountered by a Black female (mother) ‘foreigner’ researcher and the gendered implications of the insider–outsider binary in conducting doctoral research. Additionally, this article presents...