The question of a researcher’s positionality and its subsequent impact on knowledge production is central to feminist theorization on science questions (eg. Harding 1992, 2004; Haraway 1999; Collins 2004; Nencel, 2014; Zhao 2015). With the emergence of transnational feminist (and non-feminist) scholarship (Grewal and Kaplan 1994, 1999; Katz 2001; Pratt and Yeoh 2003; Khagram and Levitt 2007), more and more scholars are doing research in transnational spaces, either as a consequence of mass transnational migrations, or to meet the norm of scholarly mobility in an international regime of knowledge production. This paper explores the methodological implications in practicing feminist anti-hegemonic knowledge production in the emerging transnational scholarship and the neo-liberalist transnational knowledge regimes (Mohanty, 2013; Koukkanen 2011, Puar 2003). We argue that the researcher’s positionality has become compounded, multiple and fluid due to one’s shifting locations in a transnational space. Therefore, any engagement in transnational feminist scholarship requires navigating not only various but intersecting sets of power relations that shape one’s positionality, but also the flows of these power relations in travelling between different research locations. Theoretically, we embed our analysis in the continuing discussions (including the standpoint/poststructuralist debates) on transnational feminisms (Alexandre and Mohanty 1997, Mohanty 2003, Grewal and Kaplan 1994, 1999, Conway 2017), and aim to go beyond the concept of intersectionality to grasp the vital complexity of the question of positionality. Consequently, we adopt the concept of ‘global assemblage’ (Collier and Ong 2005) to explore the multiplicity, fluidity and changing scales of positionality. The theoretical discussions will be illustrated by reflections upon our respective transnational research experiences, one as a settler-colonial Canadian who has worked as a collaborating visiting scholar doing research about intergenerational gender relations in contemporary Gansu Province, China, and the other with migration background doing migration studies with a focus on race and ethnic relations in Norway. We develop the concept of ‘co-positioning’ both to emphasize the situational dimensions of time and space informing positionality (as an outcome of concrete enacted power relations) and to stress the agency of the researcher in addressing the ethics and methodological consequences of positionality in collaborative research practice.

Dr. Yan Zhao is an associate professor at Nord University, Norway. Her research areas include migration and ethnic relations, adoption studies, and gender studies. She is an associate editor of Journal of Comparative Social Work, and a committee member for Sino-Nordic Women and Gender Research Conference. Her recent publications include a book chapter on gender (in)equality in China, in “Gender Equality in a Global perspective”, and an article on feminist methodology in European Journal of Women’s studies.

Dr. Marie Lovrod is Program Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies and leads the Interdisciplinary Chairs Committee of Council at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research engages the intergenerational, cultural and social effects of economic and structural violence in local, national and transnational contexts. Marie values reciprocity in community-engagement opportunities that help repair social bridges where relationships are distorted by social injustice. She is committed to the principle that everyone and everything matters.

Marie Lovrod, Ph.D.
Program Chair, Women’s and Gender Studies
College of Arts & Science
University of Saskatchewan
marie.lovrod@usask.ca

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