Using Persona Dolls in research with children to combat the insider/outsider researcher status dilemma

Abstract

Persona Dolls are fabric dolls that are used as part of a specific approach (The Persona Doll approach) with young children to encourage inclusion and to challenge inequality and discrimination. Whilst dolls have been celebrated for foregrounding children’s voices in research, previous scholarship has not considered the potential for dolls to evade the insider/outsider researcher status dichotomy, facilitating a position of ‘inbetweenness’. In this Viewpoint, we propose the use of Persona Dolls in research with children as useful tools to combat the insider/outsider researcher status dilemma recognised in much geographical and other scholarship.