More than a Researcher: (Re)Constructing Identities through the Research Process

While conducting my doctoral study about identity construction of multilingual parents in the school space of their children, I started to notice how I began to reconstruct also my own identities in personal and professional contexts through the development of my research. Therefore, employing a socio-interactional perspective of identity as my theoretical lens (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005), in this autoethnography, I intend to explore how my identities were (re)constructed and (re)signified in personal and professional experiences while choosing and working with my dissertation topic in the scope of applied linguistics. For that, written entries from a personal research journal, reflections on a culture-gram, as well as memory notes were used as data, which were analyzed through thematic analysis. Particularly, the discoursive (re)construction of three identities was observed throughout the data: the multilingual, the migrant, and the mother. Challenging ideologies, conceptualizations, and representations connected to these identities simultaneously prompted me to reconstruct also my position as a researcher. By systematizing my reflections on my own growth during my path as a doctoral student, I hope to contribute to expanding the discussions on how one’s doctoral research topics interact with the researcher’s construction of identities in personal and professional spheres, and how striving but also self-empowering this process can be for young researchers while joining academic communities.