By Andrea Hernandez Holm

Introducing Positionality

Many writing assignments, genres, and reference styles require that writers include positionality statements. Some genres are entirely informed by positionality, even if we don’t recognize them. For example, personal statements ask the writer to explain what experiences have shaped their perspectives, objectives, and goals. Positionality can still be a difficult concept to grasp because we typically consider it only in the immediacy, and in relation to our own experiences
—my positionality is informed by who I am. 

In the region of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, positionality reflects many and diverse communities and stories. In a climate complicated by social, political, cultural, and personal factors, it has also often been a site of contention where inequities anchor themselves in the economy, education, interpersonal relationships, and more. It is important that students, here temporarily or permanently, consider these issues and their relationship to them. How you conduct yourself while you’re here matters. How you leave this place matters. How you do your research matters.

It can be helpful, instead, to think of positionality as a concept large enough for identity to fit within. Positionality is informed by identity, but also by the many other experiences we have in life and, as student researchers and writers, the “who I am” is entangled with who our institutions, funders, and supporters are; who the individuals and communities we work with are; and who the communities that surround our physical locations are as well. All of these elements contribute to our positionalities as academic writers and are reflected in and upon the knowledge that we produce.

From our daily work with students and faculty, my writing center recognized a need to support improved understanding of life as a scholar in the Borderlands. In 2022, I led the staff to develop Academic Writing in the Borderlands (Academic Borderlands), a program in which we could speak to student writers about the role positionalities have on the production of knowledge by researchers and writers at the university– themselves included.

In the Borderlands

My university is a research-1, land-grant institution, which means that it has top-ranked research programs and, historically, has been charged with the responsibility of providing accessible educational opportunities to the local community. It is also a Hispanic Serving Institute (at least 25% of our students identify as Hispanic) in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands and is situated within the traditional homelands of two Native American tribal nations.

Our aim with Academic Borderlands was to help students begin to explore the concept of positionality and how it applies to their own academic experiences studying and producing knowledge in the Borderlands. We were awarded funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Our staff of four welcomed 30 undergraduate and graduate students in multiple academic disciplines and engaging in various research topics. 

The program had three components. The first was a week-long institute at the beginning of our spring semester. During that time, students participated in workshops and writing sessions that incorporated instruction, activity, and discussion. They also met individually with a tutor for one-on-one consultations about writing projects and concerns. Students then had the option to continue meeting with tutors individually or to join small group tutoring for the remainder of the semester. The program also included four guest speakers over the three-month period. These were advanced graduate students and faculty members in higher education, family and community medicine, and Spanish who spoke to their experiences as scholars writing and researching in the Borderlands. The presentations were open to the public as well. In addition, the project included an online classroom that housed resources about academic writing, research, the Borderlands, and more.

Learning Our Positionalities

A foundational element of our writing center pedagogy is that teaching and learning flow in both directions during our work with students. Our goal in the Borderlands project wasn’t to create definitive language around borderlands concepts, but to generate conversation, critical thinking, and inspiration for further consideration. We wanted to know what students know and build that knowledge out into a resource that could help at whatever stage of the writing process they might be in. Therefore, questions were integrated into every lesson and interaction. These questions were for students to engage, but for us to engage as well. For example, we asked:

• What is your positionality?
• How/does your positionality inform your research and writing?
• How/does the positionality of the university inform your research and writing?
• How/do academic conventions around writing impact positionality?

We adapted the questions for ourselves:

• What is my positionality?
• How/does my positionality inform my tutoring and teaching?
• How/does the positionality of the university inform my work in the program? •How/do academic conventions around writing impact positionality?

These questions led us to examine how or if we consider our experiences and perspectives to intersect with work that we are doing as students or tutors. One student noted the questions helped them to understand the concept of bias more fully and to question if their personal biases have been informing their feelings of writer’s block. One tutor realized that they often stress the usefulness of generative writing exercises (e.g., brainstorming) for writers but never consider the role of first languages or languages of preference in these processes. Our next step was to broach the topic of Borderlands positionalities.

Are you a Borderlands scholar?

We consider “borderlands” as physical and conceptual spaces, often between perceived opposites, or where multiple concepts, identities, and experiences intersect, and in our context, Borderlands also refers to the spaces related to the U.S.-Mexico international border.

The idea of the Borderlands as a physical space was fairly easy for students to grasp. They could equate the Borderlands with the U.S.-Mexico international border as a location. And they could equate it with a site of study—public health in the Borderlands, mining in the Borderlands, higher education, and so on. What was more difficult for students to digest was the possibility that they were Borderlands scholars whether they studied the Borderlands or not. We worked to illustrate that a Borderlands scholar positionality includes being in the Borderlands, at a Borderlands institution, where your scholarship is shaped by the experience of the Borderlands.

Thinking about positionality is important even when we’re not researching topics seemingly related to those areas because as a matter of our institutional affiliation, we are affecting and affected by the Borderlands.  Raising our awareness of positionality and a borderlands positionality helps us in future projects, wherever we may be around the world.

Positionality Shaping Scholarly Research and Writing

Whether we realize it or not, positionalities are constantly shaping (and reshaping) the decisions that contribute to our research and writing processes, from the topics we choose to the specifics of our reference style to available resources and more. Consequently, there is also a potential for power dynamics to be created, as positionality can afford benefits or create biases among all members involved. For example, if a scholar is interviewing members of a community with which they identify, they may benefit from internal knowledge and insights, or alternatively, have pre-conceived feelings about the topic in question.

Some academic fields encourage scholars to write positionality statements to inform their readers of the biases that may have influenced their research. This may include where they received their training, if they identify with the same group as their research participants, what organization funded their research, and so on. Although not all fields do so, we believe that it is an important exercise for all scholars as it pushes them to think more deeply about the relationships between themselves and their research, and the many factors that contribute to research projects. 

We asked students to consider the benefits and biases created by their positionalities as scholars.

• What do you know about the places where you are? Where is your study focused?
• How do you know this information?
• What do you think you may not know?

And then, we asked them to expand upon those questions by placing them in the context of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.

• What do you know about the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, this state, this city…?
• How does the positionality of this university inform your research and writing?
• How/do academic conventions around writing impact positionality?

Again, we also asked these questions of ourselves:

• What do you know about the places where you are?
• How do you know this information?
• What do you know about the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, this state, this city…?
• How does the positionality of this university inform your tutoring or teaching priorities?
• How/do academic conventions around writing impact positionality?

We tried to emphasize that positionality itself isn’t a good or bad thing and doesn’t, by itself, generate circumstances that help or harm parties. Rather, it’s what we do from our positionalities that sets actions in motion and influences positive or negative outcomes. Do the sources of our research funding, for example, impact our research questions or methods? How do those impacts reflect upon the work we’re doing in the Borderlands? Does where we have lived influence how we interpret a text?

What We Learned

Our final questions for students included a return to the original ones about their positionality and its influence on their research and writing, and an addition of the following new questions:

• How do you fit into the Borderlands story?
• What does it mean to you to be a Borderlands scholar?
• Do you identify as a Borderlands scholar? Why or why not?

Students’ responses varied widely as they continued to grapple with the issues we introduced in the workshops and those they confronted in their own writing. Some expressed a continued interest in a desire to “develop connection to Borderlands,” “increase awareness of Borderlands,” and find more “support and community” to keep exploring the topics. While the program spanned a full academic semester, it wasn’t enough time for many.

I think when we bring in our positions to the work, we have to do so in a way that provides depth to the work and connects to it. I think [it] showed me how to responsibly enter our subjectivities into the work when necessary. —Doctoral student participant

I did not really think of myself as a borderlands writer or scholar, but I liked thinking about how borderlands contexts shape my research and writing. This is something I will continue to explore in my writing. A member of my breakout group stated that perhaps we are “creating a borderlands” in the program as folks from different fields are coming together to write and share writing. This is something that helped broaden the idea of borderlands in this program for me. —Doctoral student participant 

Upon reflection on the question, staff began to think more deeply about the language of academia and how it informs our tutoring and teaching. Do we miss opportunities to respect the diversity of the Borderlands and students’ positionalities in an emphasis on standards and conventions? Do we notice the biases of our experiences shaping our pedagogies?

Exploring positionality together proved valuable. It helped both raise awareness of how our experiences inform what we do and how we hold ourselves accountable in our research, writing—and tutoring.

Postscript: In 2025, the budget changes in our college led to the closure of our program and termination of the staff. Consequently, Academic Writing in the Borderlands as we imagined it has also ended. This does not mean that such programs are unnecessary or unsustainable. In fact, I would suggest the opposite.