Research into senior groups and their political nature has serious gaps. We claim that participants in the process are best placed to be both researchers and, with others, the subject of research. Here we illustrate the shortcomings of current methodologies, such as action research, due to the spatial separation and detemporalisation between what is being researched and the construction of a research interpretation. We highlight a tendency to veer towards the intellectual post hoc interpretation of events at the expense of the visceral nature of immersed human experience.

Reflexivity in this paper refers to the attention paid to engaging with one’s own experience and the noticing of one’s sometimes unsettling movement of thought over an extended period of time and by doing so how this in turn affects one’s own practice with others. We give examples of and argue for reflexive practice which understands and overcomes its own immersed nature.