Abstract:
This paper discusses the methodological strategies of ghostwriting and shadowwriting in the context of a feminist research project about women design academics. Central to these strategies is the idea that the practice of research writing is a form of enquiry and thus researchers are textual practitioners. I will argue that as textual practices of research, ghostwriting and shadowwriting provide ways for researchers to acknowledge that research texts: are jointly constructed by researcher and participant; seek not truth, but to (re)present people's lived experiences; and through the act of writing, produce meaning, rather than discover reality. In these terms, as each research text produces one of many possible interpretations of participants' experiences, researchers are ethically responsible for their textual choices and practices. Ghostwriting and shadowwriting are proposed as two such possible strategies.
