This is the first post in a new mini-series of posts I am calling #AmIAllowed – as in “am I allowed to do X in my thesis/writing?” I often get these questions from doctoral candidates, usually because someone – a supervisor or a peer – has told them they are not allowed to do it. The first question I have chosen to tackle is the one I get asked most often: “Am I allowed to use ‘I’ in my thesis/academic writing?” This is a question that doesn’t have a simple yes or no answer, but that also doesn’t have a hard no as an answer either. It is also an issue on which there is very little useful and clear advice online. I hope that this post is helpful as a way of working out for yourself when, why and how you might want or need to use ‘I’ and when not, in your own writing.

The first thing to say, I think, is that we all have a presence in our writing and research: an authorial presence, a passionate presence, a personal presence. We research topics/subjects/questions we care about, so we are never separate from or completely objective about the work we are doing and the writing we put out into the world. However, having said that, we are also not, in academia, in the business of just spouting knowledge for the sake of it or shouting our personal beliefs and opinions at others. In academia we make arguments that are reasoned and evidence-based – that’s point one – and these arguments are always provoked in some way. In other words, we do research to build and substantiate an argument we are making in response to a provocation from somewhere – the work of another researcher, something happening in the world around us, something happening in industry, and so on – that leads to questions we don’t yet have full or clear answers to. That’s point two: we make new knowledge in conversation with existing knowledge, and the makers of that knowledge.

This is important because, as Gerry Graff and Cathy Birkenstock argue in their brilliant book, They say, I say. The moves that matter in academic writing, we are not just focused on the ‘I say’ bit – the bit you are working on, driven by, passionate about sharing. We have to focus on the ‘they say’ bit, and the “because ‘they say’, this is what ‘I say'” move that must follow. What research already exists? Why have you been provoked into making this argument you are working on? Where’s the gap/silence/problem/need driving you and this research, and what pertinent knowledge do you need to explain to your reader so that they understand your argument, and can be persuaded by it? All academic writing, in different ways depending on the values, ethics and ways of working of the discipline(s) it is done within, is persuasive: we are trying to convince readers to find our argument provocative, useful, and so on. We’re not putting information on a page for readers to make of what they will; we are crafting arguments to persuade readers to agree with us, or at least engage with us in their own argument-making work.

So where do you come into the writing, then, if you are doing all this thinking, reading, arguing and persuading? Can you say ‘I believe’, ‘I argue’, ‘I think’? The obvious answer here is ‘yes, of course you can’. You are the author of that argument. BUT, you might be working in a discipline or field that doesn’t actually let you use the first person ‘I’. You may have to show readers what you believe, argue, think and why without that pronoun.

Let’s start, though, with that personal pronoun – I (or we). As in, ‘In this paper, I/we will show that…’ or ‘I/we would argue that this is not the case in this particular context’. And so on. When are you “allowed” to use I (or we)? I use these personal pronouns in all my published academic papers and book chapters. I work in Education, I am social scientist, and a qualitative researcher. It would be weird for me to not use personal pronouns, because of the position and positionality I have in relation to my research and the participants and data I work with. The ontology, epistemology and axiology that underpins the theory and methods I draw on and use in my research requires, to some extent, that I am overt in my use of ‘I’ in my writing. This is a key point in working out when (and how and why) to use ‘I’ , or not. What are the values of your discipline or field, and the methods and theory you are using, related to generating and presenting new knowledge?

In many or most of the natural sciences, for example, researchers work in a positivist (or closely related) paradigm, the underpinning values of which prize objectivity and reliability of knowledge. What is valued is the accuracy of the procedures, techniques and methods that have been used to generate the knowledge, not the positionality of the researcher or their engagement with the subject of the research. We want and need science to be clear, reliable replicable and trustworthy. Introducing ‘I’ into a section like the methods, for example, or the results – ‘I titrated the solution’ or ‘I believe that the results show that…’ would undermine the clarity and reliability of the results, which can be deadly in some cases – for example, in epidemiology or immunology, where we are working to persuade people, based on our research, that a vaccine is safe for use. The focus needs to be on the science itself, and on its credibility. This is one of the main reasons scientists tend to avoid personal pronouns in their writing. Similar values may also underpin some of the social sciences, too, for example, clinical or forensic psychology.

In many of the social sciences and humanities, including some of the arts, however, we may not have the same values. We may want and need to make our claims on a more overtly subjective basis, because we need to fully acknowledge our positionality and personal investments in the knowledge we have generated to make claims that are trustworthy, credible and persuasive. What is valued is not the exact application of not technical set of procedures or replicability, but rather the perspectives and dispositions we evidence in the arguments we make. In social research that uses qualitative methods, especially, where who you are as the researcher in that setting plays a role in what data you are able to generate and how you use theory to construct findings, we may have to use ‘I’ to be credible: ‘I spoke to the participants on three separate occasions’; ‘It was my observation that this participant was hesitant in sharing his story at first…’ and so on.

Having said all of this, though, you may notice that there are places, in all disciplines or fields, where we do, and do not, use ‘I’ in our arguments. For example, in the sciences (climate science, soil science, hydrology, ecology as examples), I have seen authors use I/we in their Introduction and Conclusion sections, but seldom in the Methods, Results and Discussion sections. They may, for example, say ‘Based on the prior research in the field, we have identified two key research questions’, or ‘We can thus conclude that…’. In the arts and social sciences, we want to be careful where and how we use ‘I’ too – too many personal pronouns can make your argument sound too personal; in other words, disconnected from what the evidence and research is enabling you to argue for (or against). I tend to use ‘I’ to set up my arguments and conclusions, similarly to the example I have just given; I also tend to use it in my methods, where I indicate choices I have made and engagement with participants (e.g., I spoke to three of the participants in social settings of their choosing, and two of them came to my place of work’. or ‘In light of the research questions, I chose to use a narrative form of interviewing, with adaptations for context’.) I don’t use ‘I’ anywhere in the discussion of the literature or in the analysis, typically, because here I want the reader focused on the data I am evidencing my claims with – from existing research and from my own primary research respectively.

I would love to end this post with a super-clear answer for each of you as to when (and how) you are allowed to use ‘I’ in your writing. Sadly, I can’t. You need to work this out by looking at what the authors in the conversation with you are doing: are they using any of these pronouns? Where? Why, do you think? If they are not, what are they substituting? Probably, they are using some form of third person pronoun or similar (with the passive voice) – ‘Based on the reading of the field, this study posed two research questions’. or ‘The participants were interviewed in social settings of their choosing, or at my place of work’. or ‘The solution was titrated…’, and so on. The author is still present in that text, but they are drawing your focus to the data, the field, the research questions, rather than to themselves as the researcher, probably in line with what their field values in knowledge-making. In your own reading, start noting the ‘moves’ the authors you are in conversation with are making, when, where and what the effect is on the argument. Mimic and play with these moves in your writing, and ask for feedback. The more you are aware of and can control the choices you make in your writing, the less you will worry about what you are (and are not) ‘allowed’ to do, and the more confident you will become in the arguments you are crafting.