Post about the Workshop “Positionality Statements: A tool to Open up Your Research, held 26 September at VU Amsterdam. Organized by Dr Tamarinde Haven, Dr. Bogdana Huma and Daniela Gawehns.
What comes to your mind when you think of openness in research? If you now take out a pen and start writing freely, which associations would make it onto paper? With a group of 11 colleagues, we met, sketched and discovered how different notions of openness, academic values and personal backgrounds influence how we do research.
Positionality statements come out of standpoint theory and are based on the idea that we do not only experience the world in different ways, but that those experiences shape our research, including the study design and analysis of our data. With this workshop, we wanted to explore if positionality statements can be used to bring a wider notion of openness to the open science and reproducibility discussion.
During the introduction round, participants shared their career paths and motivations to do the research they are currently doing or supporting. We heard stories of more or less twisted paths from the full breath of academic backgrounds, fields and methodologies.
After a short introduction of standpoint theory and a warm-up exercise to get everyone used to writing freely and with pen on paper, participants were asked to write about what openness means to them.
Given the setting of the workshop within the open science week, many responses were along the lines of transparency and rigor, trust and accountability. Some mentioned openness as being something courageous, inviting criticism, fluidity and uncertainty. We also discovered that openness has a lot to do with vulnerability, a topic that came back later when discussing how detailed positionality statements should be.
The remaining writing prompts invited workshop attendees to write about their own values, beliefs and backgrounds, as well as reflecting on how those values, backgrounds and beliefs influence our research. The resulting sketches are a first step towards a draft positionality statement.
A topic that came back in several questions was the level of detail a positionality statement should have. In some fields of research the mention of gender or seniority might invite extra harsh criticism, while in other research contexts the gender of the researcher might be an important attribute to mention. The workshop leaders left it to a very practical approach: the author decides what is relevant for their statement. If mentioning academic backgrounds is enough to make clear through which lens a certain problem was approached, this might suffice.
This workshop introduced participants to the tool of positionality statements and was by no means enough to lead to more than a few first thoughts. We invited participants to think about opening research processes beyond sharing research outputs openly. This will not directly increase the computational reproducibility of someone’s research outputs. A positionality statement will however help consumers of research contextualize outputs and grasp how they could be reused. Accepting that our research is influenced by external and internal factors, opens up the process and makes for more vulnerable, accountable and maybe humble research.
Trainers and teachers are more than welcome to reuse the workshop materials and can find the workbook and slidedeck on zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/17174961
More resources:
- Jamieson, M. K., Govaart, G. H., & Pownall, M. (2023). Reflexivity in quantitative research: A rationale and beginner’s guide. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 17(4), e12735. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12735
- similar workshop at SIPS 2021: OSF | SIPS Positionality Workshop.pdf
- Field, S., & Pownall, M. (2025). Subjectivity is a Feature, not a Flaw: A Call to Unsilence the Human Element in Science. OSF. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/ga5fb_v1