ESBB supports the use of a strong FIRST-PERSON voice at this conference. As an organisation, we aim to empower authors and researchers who clearly indicate their own agency in the research approaches they adopt or create. We do not accept papers that refer to the researcher or presenter in a pseudo-anonymous third person. Use ‘I’ to refer to yourself rather than expressions such as ‘the researcher’. Do not use an impersonal voice to refer to your own choices, decisions, or actions.
We believe research choices you make are never ‘impartial’. They are choices made by you as the researcher. It is difficult to understand how an author can somehow stand outside the paper they authored or the research they conducted. Objectivity is very difficult to claim. Very few journals now avoid a first-person voice. Even science journals like Nature prefer the first person to express the obvious agency of researchers.
We have published a paper that explains our policy on first-person voice to represent transparently the agency of presenters, authors, and researchers:
Nunn, R, Brandt, C., & Deveci, T. (2018). Transparency, subjectivity, and objectivity in academic texts. English Scholarship Beyond Borders, 4(1), 71-102. http://www.englishscholarsbeyondborders.org/esbb-journal-publications/english-scholarship-beyond-border-volume-4-issue-2018/
