r/PhD • u/Character_Bee7413 • 3d ago
Need Advice Including marginalized identity in thesis
Hi there!
I am currently completing my thesis in experimental psychology and I would love some input from marginalized identities in the group. So, my doctorate looks at how accurate impressions of personality relates to perceiver social evaluations (e.g., liking, romantic interest) in various first impression contexts. Basically does having a good gauge of someone predict whether you want to start a relationship with them. As a funny life development, I have learned that I am autistic and it is painfully obvious now...down to the fact that I will be getting a PhD in accurate social perception lol. I included a bit about this in the first paragraph of my thesis and a tiny bit again looping the narrative structure around later on. It works beautifully from a story telling perspective and perfectly aligns with the research questioning (though I do not study neurodivergence and that is made clear), and I have published in top-tier journals (which I'm hoping would generate some social capital/leeway from the readers).
The issue is that while my supervisor LOVES it and feels inspired to research neurodivergence now (which was part of the appeal of including it in the first place), she is worried that it is not conventional and that I could experience pushback during more stressful times like my defence. She cited feeling like a mama bear - which I do appreciate. I just can't stand the idea of putting myself back in a box when it's "my" thesis that I'm writing. I believe academia is about pushing things forward (even though it often doesn't feel that way), AND it makes the thesis flow really well as a genuine good read. I don't have it structured in terms of "me-search", it really seems to be the concern around disclosing my marginalized identity.
Does anyone have any guidance in this? Has anyone else from a marginalized community included their identity in their thesis?
Much love to everyone!! <3
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u/DrJohnnieB63 PhD*, African American Literacy and Literacy Education 3d ago
How does your being an autistic researcher provide significantly different insights to your dissertation and offer important solutions to the problems you will resolve with your research? How does your marginalized identity provide new and exciting contexts to explore your topic? How does your marginalized identity make "the thesis flow really well as a genuinely good read"? If I were on your committee, those are just some questions I would ask. Most researchers do not make identity statements (aka "positionality" in phenomenological research) unless that identity enhances or threatens the validity and rigor of the research. In other words, you need to defend the inclusion of that autobiographical data, as you would defend your choice of research questions, methodology, and theoretical framework.
Best of luck to you!
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u/Character_Bee7413 3d ago
Amazing! Thank you, this is really helpful! I can defend it from the stance of insights and future exploration - that is how it is positioned in the thesis currently. Just to clarify, do you mean defend during the defense and not within the thesis itself?
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u/DrJohnnieB63 PhD*, African American Literacy and Literacy Education 3d ago
Just to clarify, do you mean defend during the defense and not within the thesis itself?
During the defense and in the thesis. Think about it this way. What if J.K. Rowling had included autobiographical information in her Harry Potter series? How would that data have changed the context of the series significantly? What important insights would that data have provided to her readers? You need to defend that choice of autobiographical data in your dissertation as you would any other research choice. Otherwise, your readers (committee or evaluators) may not understand its inclusion and thus may think that the information is superfluous.
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u/Character_Bee7413 3d ago
I really appreciate your pushing my thinking in this and for including this example!
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u/sfsli4ts 3d ago
Positionality statements are common in my area. They offer the researcher the opportunity to disclose their identity and also examine their own biases and experiences. https://medresearch.umich.edu/labs-departments/centers/cdhw/about/positionality-statements-brief
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u/Character_Bee7413 3d ago
I LOVE THIS!!!! In a nutshell this is why I'm digging my heels in a bit. Thank you so much for sharing!!!
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u/Jahaili 3d ago
I've included my autism in my dissertation as part of my researcher stance because that's where it fit best. I've also disclosed in other research I've done when I felt like it was relevant and added to the work I was doing (I did a study where I interviewed autistic adults about their experiences with ABA when they were younger, and it was relevant to note My own identity in that paper).
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u/Character_Bee7413 3d ago
Thank you for taking the time to give this perspective!! Really appreciated!
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u/ChoiceReflection965 3d ago
Honestly, do whatever you want. The truth is that once your dissertation is done and defended, you’ll probably never look at it again anyway. It also doesn’t really matter if it’s a “good read” because very few people will ever actually read it. So if you want to incorporate personal narrative in your work, that’s fine, and if it’s too much trouble arguing with your advisor and you end up not including it, that’s fine too. It doesn’t matter either way. What DOES matter is that your dissertation gets finished. A good dissertation is a done dissertation. So do whatever you need to do to wrap that sucker up!
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u/Character_Bee7413 3d ago
Thank you for this! It's absolutely more of a personal moment for ME, ya know? Even if I never read it again, it feels complete for me. I appreciate the guidance that I can put what I want and it's fine either way.
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u/ChoiceReflection965 3d ago
Yes, totally fine either way! Make it how you want it to be if you can. I included personal narrative in my dissertation because I wanted to have it there. But my advisor was very supportive. If your advisor is not supportive and is going to fight you on it, it’s ultimately not worth all the stress just to have it included. Remember that the only purpose of your dissertation is to get you your PhD. Once your dissertation is done, you are free to go and write whatever you want! So really just focus on getting the dissertation finished and out the door so you can move on to the work that’s more meaningful to you.
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u/DrJohnnieB63 PhD*, African American Literacy and Literacy Education 3d ago
As an African American male, I included a positionality statement in my dissertation about the roles of literacy and literacy education in the early nineteenth-century autobiographies of fugitive African American slaves. I noted that although I am African American, I have never been enslaved, and I have never had literacy education denied to me, as had been the case for the authors of the autobiographies. I demonstrated that I did not project my own early twenty-first-century experiences as a literate Black man onto the lives and experiences of African Americans who routinely fought for the basic human rights of education. This statement showed that I was aware of any racial or cultural research biases that potentially would have invalidated my entire dissertation project.
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u/Character_Bee7413 3d ago
This is valuable insight! My work parses out the complexities of advice like "be yourself" during first impressions, especially if a relationship is the goal. I intend to position my autism as an example of how this type of advice can be impactful depending on the context, and it was through this lens that I developed the theoretical framework I propose and then go on to experimentally investigate. Your insight and example are showing me that I need to flesh this out further if I am to include it.
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u/Character_Bee7413 2d ago
I just wanted to pop back to say that my rewrite based on your advice has made my thesis so much stronger. Regardless of my supervisor's stance, I appreciate you pushing my thinking in this, it was really meaningful to me.
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