Hello, my name is Ieisha (pronounced A-i-sha), I’m an ESRC (UBEL DTP) funded PhD candidate in the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. I use biographical narrative methods to research the lived experience of whiteness among different generations of EU migrants in post-Brexit London. I’m also interested in interrogating the research encounter itself, particularly when researching “across difference”. As such, I seek to weave reflexive and relational practices through the entire research process.

Working Title: To dance or not to dance? Negotiating unexpected power dynamics at a senior citizen’s lunch club.


This reflexive writing piece uses excerpts from my research journal and fieldwork notes to tentatively think through some of the ways unexpected negotiations of power can produce disruptive/disturbing/destabilising moments in unconventional research encounters and how such dynamics might themselves be disrupted.