The Stories We Tell

How does it feel, as a researcher, to stand pregnant in a glue-smelling shoe factory in Addis Ababa while Japanese experts check whether their project has succeeded? How do you navigate a night spent at a sacred site in Senegal, where every shadow seems to whisper a new story? And what do you discover about yourself when a teenager in Antwerp unexpectedly lets you cut off her braids?

In this anthology, researchers from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University share nineteen personal, surprising, and at times moving moments from their work. These are stories that would normally never make it into academic articles; this is not because they are unimportant, but simply because they do not fit within the strict form and tone of academic publications.

This book shows that there is another way of talking about research: one that pays attention to emotions, confusion, humour, doubt, imagination, and chance encounters. These personal experiences form the reality behind fieldwork, archival visits, interviews, and analyses—and offer an honest, human picture of what research really is.