Positionality and researcher reflexivity – how to account for one’s subject position – remain as challenges for new researchers. But they also remain as challenges for experienced researchers, who are often involved in multiple research projects simultaneously. Where Am I in the Picture? sheds light on the idea of researcher positionality through visual methodologies, particularly in the context of studying rurality in Canada, Sweden, and South Africa. The book is intended for new and experienced researchers seeking to decolonize their own perspectives in research in the social sciences and humanities. It incorporates photographs, drawings, and memory work to highlight the social constructedness of what counts as rural. Drawing together compelling narratives from researchers about their positionality in studying rurality, the book highlights a need for greater attention to “where we are in the picture” more broadly. It suggests that when it comes to the rural, researchers need to rethink the interplay of dominant images, insider and outsider perspectives, and what this interplay means in relation to interpretation. Where Am I in the Picture? presents a new vision of how to take into consideration positionality in research.

When Joan Spenser's twelve-year-old grandson asks her what birthday parties were like when she was his age, she has to admit that she did not go to many. Later, thinking about this conversation and how different things are today, Joan's memory takes off on a journey it has travelled many times before, back through the years to Southeast London in 1956. While visiting a local museum with her mother, young Joan comes across an unusual and fascinating painting which seems to depict some form of Heaven and Hell. It is in turn beautiful and yet darkly disturbing, and Joan is so mesmerized by it that it will influence her perception of events - some happy, some tragic - that are to occur in the coming months. With the specter of the ancient painting never far from her mind, Joan makes her way through a difficult and at times bewildering year in which she learns that life is not always fair, and people are often not what they appear to be.