‘Humanising’ Statelessness ‘planning knowledge out of ethnography’ towards making ‘ethnography out of planned knowledge’. 14 In this type of research, insights come from combining the experience of insider participation with the detachment of an outsider. 15 My positions both as an intern of Creative Court and as an observer meet this standard; I both observed and partook in activities related to knowledge production processes on statelessness and artistic practices. Consistent challenges in the duality of my positions were found in my pre-existing biases and assumptions regarding the issue of statelessness. On this challenge, Kim England argued that it is not easy for the researcher to take the ‘personal’ out of the equation when it comes to the ‘professional’, because fieldwork itself is personal. 16 For instance, I initially assumed that operating within the nation-state framework without challenging it was not going to help eradicate statelessness. However, Rabiaa Benlahbib, director of Creative Court, maintained a position that the organisation was not going to make things political. It was hard for me to understand such a position as, for me, art is inherently political, regardless of whether one wants it to be or not. So, when we engaged in discussion, I would pose the idea of challenging the nation-state, and she would motivate me to look at the influence and significance of artistic approaches to statelessness. Gradually, both our opinions took on characteristics of the other’s argument. She would say, ‘I want you to get yourself out from under your academic ideas and think like a human’. 17 I would then argue that ‘as a human being, I cannot alienate my background or the waves of thought I have developed over the years’. 18 Ghislaine Gallenga illustrated these delicate challenges that derive from doing ethnography in the workplace. She states, ‘the main drawbacks are that the ethnographer will only be assigned a subordinate role and will be constantly caught between her position as an employee and her status as a researcher’. 19 In this context, ‘interpretive reflexivity’ was important for me to deal with those challenges. According to Paul Lichterman, [i]f we ethnographers want to make our explanatory claims more transparent and disputable by readers, then we need to show readers how we came up with our interpretations, how we made mistakes and lucky guesses along the way to capturing other people’s meanings. That is what interpretive reflexivity discloses. 20 I found this insight useful when writing my field notes and subsequently analysing my notes in a more reflective way. My position as an intern also allowed me to observe and participate in Creative Court’s artistic approach to conceptualising, framing and representing statelessness. I have used observation for this ethnographic research to collect the primary materials used for this article, along with my everyday conversations and idea exchanges with members of Creative Court. I did not conduct any structured 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 ibid viii. ibid. Kim England, ‘Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality, and Feminist Research’ (1994) 46(1) The Professional Geographer 85. Informal Conversation with Rabiaa Benlahbib, Director, Creative Court (Mizanur Rahman, Creative Court 15 March 2019). ibid Ghislaine Gallenga, ‘Elements of Reflexive Anthropology in Three Fieldwork Studies of the Workplace’ (2013) 2(2) Journal of Business Anthropology 187, 189. Paul Lichterman, ‘Interpretive Reflexivity in Ethnography’ (2015) 18(1) Ethnography 35, 38. (emphasis in original). 275