‘Feeling what I write’: researching disability and leisure with experience of living with a disability

Abstract

Our different experiences of the world can alter how we carve our identities and sense of place within it. Thus, many have argued that writing and sharing our personal experiences in research can often help us give others a different understanding of the world. Having a personal experience of a phenomenon can also assist researchers in the formulation and conceptualisation of their different ideas during the research process. However, whilst valuable, researchers’ different memories and recollections can negatively impact the research process as well. Sometimes different memories and recollections can alter what we see within our research and how we see what is happening in the real world. Therefore, this research note explores how our embodied experiences of a phenomenon can affect our research. It will centre around my own experiences of living with a disability, listening to those of other disabled people, my ever-changing professional and personal understanding of leisure, and how my own personal experiences have affected my interactions with disability and leisure research over the years.