Reflexive insiderness in peer research: A collective self-reflection from a large multilingual research team

This article critically reflects on the experiences of a research team of 11 peer researchers (PRs) and three principal investigators who conducted a large-scale qualitative study on multilingual disaster communication during the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand. The project relied on PRs’ (perceived) insiderness to recruit and interview participants from within linguistic minority communities. However, PR involvement sometimes complicated – and even compromised – the insider status and the trust it was expected to develop. Drawing on collective self-reflections, we explore how PRs mobilised, calibrated and negotiated multiple insider identities and experiences and how these practices fostered power-attentive ‘reflexive insidernesses’. The paper offers insights into how PR positionalities are shaped through PR-participant interactions as well as by the research process and structural constraints. By foregrounding PRs’ voices and experiences, the paper identifies practical strategies that may benefit scholars working, or considering working, alongside PRs.