Dual-Positioned Researcher

A researcher who holds both the role of investigator and the lived experience of the condition or community being studied — for example, a person with OCD studying OCD, or a Deaf researcher studying Deaf users. Dual-positioned researchers bring interpretive depth and epistemic access that outsiders lack, but must also navigate risks of over-identification, emotional load, and bias. The framing, developed in critical mental health research, parallels related concepts such as insider research, standpoint epistemology, and auto-ethnography in disability studies.