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Purpose – This chapter explores the strategies and tactics employed by researchers when dealing with emotionally challenging situations, both in the field and in academia in general.

Methodology/Approach – It draws on a qualitative longitudinal project investigating how recent Polish migrants from cities that are rather homogenous in terms of ethnicity and religion make sense of, and come to terms with, the much greater diversity they encounter in German and British cities. The project adopts a mixed-methods approach that includes social network analysis, focus groups, creative methods and in-depth interviews.

Findings – Moving beyond the inside–outsider binary in qualitative research, the authors reflect on their management of conflicting feelings about what happens in research situations. The authors discuss interview situations they found particularly emotionally challenging and the different ways they supported each other during and after fieldwork, for instance, when faced with situations in which research participants say things that are racist, Islamophobic, homophobic, xenophobic, classist or misogynist. They reflect on their use of electronic media, especially email and messenger applications, as tools which not only allow them to unpack the emotions that emerge in fieldwork, but also enable them to collaboratively reflect on their own positionalities in the field.

Originality/Value – The chapter argues that face-to-face and virtual interactions with colleagues can create spaces of care, self-care and solidarity. These relational spaces can form integral support systems for researchers and help them to deal with both the emotionality of social-science research and the wider emotional labour of academic work.

Purpose – To ascertain how the institutional environment of the armed forces has differentially impacted men and women in their experiences of sexual harassment.

Methodology – Logistic regression analyses of the 1995 Armed Forces Sexual Harassment Survey and the 2002 Status of the Armed Forces Survey – Workplace and Gender Relations.

Findings – Gender does not override all other factors in determining who is most likely to be targeted for sexual harassment in the military. Gender is shown to be most informative about the likelihood of experiencing sexual harassment for women only when combined with race and rank. For men, however, it seems that race is more salient than rank in determining the likelihood of being targeted for sexual harassment.

Research limitations – One glaring omission in this analysis is the effect of same-sex sexual harassment on the work environment of the military. There simply was not sufficient time or space to cover that aspect in this analysis, but it is an important direction for further research on sexual harassment in the military to explore.

Practical implications – Policy makers in the Department of Defense must be more attuned to the interlocking effects of race and gender as they combine with rank to properly address the problem of sexual harassment in the military. It is not enough to simply provide training about sexual harassment; personnel comprising the chain of command within the hierarchical structure of the military must become more cognizant of the microlevel interactions occurring between personnel as part of the everyday work environment.