This chapter is a retrospective account of the great adventure ofPhDoing while Parenting which started after the researcher’s MPhil to PhD upgrade for a doctoral research in International Development on the Contemporary Land Rush and Contradictions of Agrarian Change in Senegal. In front of her all-male supervisory committee, the researcher defended her upgrade paper while 5 months pregnant.
In this chapter, the main phases of returning home for research are explored using a dramaturgical metaphor of fieldwork. More specifically, this paper firstly questions the research methodologies most researchers in international development have inherited, then it analyses the challenges of conducting a decolonial and feminist research before focusing on the many dilemmas of fieldworking as a woman from the very country she is researching with a baby hence the researcher’s calling herself a feminist ‘tightrope walker’ trying not to ‘go native’. Finally, this chapter explores how the multiple identities and gender as well as the genealogy of the research topic influenced the research process and outcomes and vice versa. Whilst the researcher was judged both as an insider and an outsider, sometimes as a ‘tubaab’ – a foreigner in her own country because she is based in the UK, very surprisingly, her research was facilitated by the fact that she was judged more as a ‘courageous mother’ than a ‘foreign’ researcher in a society which attributes a special place to mothers but does not expect young women to question power relations, states and companies land deals, and more importantly the gender of power.