by Reem Elnady
When I first began my PhD, I thought I was designing a study. What I did not realize was that the study would also reshape me—my methods, my assumptions, and my understanding of what it means to do feminist urban research. Working closely with Muslim refugee women in Bristol has continually challenged the idea of the researcher as expert and of methods as neutral tools. I have come to understand that feminist urban research is not simply about studying others, but about building knowledge together—knowledge that is situated, relational, and grounded in lived experience. As, my research explores the urban integration and everyday experiences of Muslim refugee women in Bristol, I approached this work from the understanding that knowledge begins from the standpoint of the marginalized. This standpoint is never singular or fixed as women are not a homogenous group. Their realities are subjective, complex, and shaped by daily experiences, social positions, and interactions with the urban environment.
From this perspective, research is not conducted about participants but with them. Their stories, insights, and embodied knowledge offer critical entry points to understanding how social and spatial structures shape refugee women’s everyday lives. To access this, I conducted a series of focus groups with women from diverse backgrounds—Arabic-speaking, Somali, Sudanese, Kurdish, and others. Each group brought with them unique languages, cultural norms, migration stories, and ways of engaging with the city. I approached these focus groups as collaborative spaces—not just data-gathering exercises, but dialogic encounters where knowledge is co-produced.
However, working across such diversity revealed the limitations of a one-size-fits-all method. Differences in language, literacy, familiarity with the city, and comfort with group discussion constantly required me to reflect and adapt my approach. Reflexivity, therefore, became not a methodological add-on, but a foundational practice embedded throughout the research process. As part of my inquiry, I employed a range of participatory methods to capture how women navigate and experience the city. Two methods—emotional mapping and cognitive mapping—proved particularly insightful in revealing the spatial and emotional dimensions of participants’ everyday urban lives.
Emotional mapping acknowledges that human experiences of space are not merely functional or physical; they are deeply emotional. Yet, emotions have historically been marginalized in urban studies and spatial analysis. Emotional geography challenges this marginalization by arguing that emotions are not only relevant to space, but they also actively shape spatial experiences.
In practice, I conducted emotional mapping exercises using printed maps of Bristol and stickers symbolizing various emotions—such as joy, fear, comfort, or discrimination. Women marked locations associated with feelings, sparking discussions around safety, belonging, racism, and isolation. These visual tools translated intangible experiences into shared, visible forms, making them accessible for collective reflection. However, the method also revealed a critical assumption: map literacy. While some participants were highly familiar with the city’s geography, others—despite years in Bristol—struggled with reading and interpreting maps. To address this, we adapted the method by incorporating photographs of key locations and encouraging storytelling and group discussion to support participation. Emotional mapping thus evolved into a hybrid tool—part perceptual, part emotional—that uncovered layers of urban experience often missed by conventional methods.
Cognitive mapping was used to explore participants’ mental representations of the city—specifically their daily journeys, patterns of navigation, and places of meaning. This method allowed women to visually and narratively express how they experienced and understood urban space, identifying landmarks of comfort or zones of exclusion. These maps revealed not only spatial knowledge but also the social, emotional, and cultural textures embedded in their everyday routines. For women with limited English, cognitive mapping offered a non-verbal way of expression. In some groups, especially where participants did not know each other personally, the activity stimulated rich dialogue, with younger participants often assisting older women in illustrating their maps. However, in groups where women knew each other well, cultural norms around privacy and modesty made sharing more difficult. Here, the method was less successful, as fears of judgment or exposure constrained openness.
These experiences affirmed the importance of methodological flexibility and sensitivity when working across diverse cultural and linguistic contexts. Each method offered powerful insights but also required ongoing adaptation and responsiveness. Some methods I anticipated would succeed fell flat; others unexpectedly sparked meaningful dialogue. The process reminded me that feminist urban research is not a linear application of tools but an iterative, relational practice of listening, learning and adjusting. Success lies not in perfect planning, but in a willingness to revise, pause, or even abandon a method when it no longer serves the participants. Reflexivity, in this context, is not a discrete phase but a continuous way of thinking, doing, and being throughout the research journey.
Reem Elnady is a Doctoral Researcher in the Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments.