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Qualitative researchers experience a myriad of emotions during fieldwork. Yet, a reluctance to display and openly discuss emotions in relation to research practice means little insight on how these can inform the research process exists. In this paper, we explore the researcher’s emotions in an organizational ethnography of an emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify three emotional triggers (uncertain field access, disrupted research practices, and researcher exposure) and discuss the researcher’s embodied experiences and reflexive responses. We present four ways in which the researcher’s emotions can be used as a resource for embodied reflexivity: (i) deepening field engagement through a focus on collective experiences, (ii) using the researcher’s agency to refocus data collection and enhance creativity, (iii) merging inward and outward focus to reframe the research project, and (iv) visualizing emotions throughout the research process to avoid mind-body dualisms. This paper joins recent discussions on qualitative methods and reflexivity and answers calls for making the researcher’s field presence visible in qualitative research. We contribute by delineating ways in which emotions, as a resource for embodied reflexivity, can inform qualitative research.

Qualitative researchers are exposed to a myriad of emotions associated with experiences from the field. Yet, little insight on how these are intertwined with the research process exists. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between researcher and researched by looking closer at the challenges encountered during an organizational ethnography of an emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors engaged in peer debriefing sessions to construct a reflective account of the research process. Drawing on Barad’s ontology, the paper discusses the need to recognize the entanglement of researcher and researched and how the researcher can actively gauge and redirect emotions into methodological impetus to inform and sustain research focus despite unforeseeable events. The paper answers calls for making researchers’ emotions visible in qualitative research and organizational ethnography and contributes by articulating and visualizing the mutually constitutive relationship between researcher and researched.