220 17 INSIDE/OUTSIDE/IN-BETWEEN On the discomfort of shifting locations as a border-crossing academic Nida Kirmani As social scientists, our work often directly grows out of our personal journeys – journeys that are physical, emotional, intellectual, and politi- cal. However, this is rarely acknowledged. This lack of self-reflection likely springs from a tradition within the social sciences of exploring ‘the other’ rather than thinking critically about ourselves. Historically, social scientists have been trained to distance ourselves from our research subjects in order to maintain a guise of objectivity. However, since the 1970s, many post- structural, postcolonial, and feminist critics have argued that this distance masks the role of power in the production of particular kinds of subjects. More recently, there has been a growing push emerging from within the social sciences to decolonize the academy. This push is coming mostly from younger academics of colour who are marginalized within the academy and who argue that racism, classism, and sexism still plague the social sciences at every level. This chapter explores the tensions and moments of discomfort in my own personal, intellectual, and political journey as a mobile scholar. I begin by outlining my experience researching the experience of marginality amongst Muslim women in India as an American PhD student with ties to both India and Pakistan. I trace my experience conducting research in a Muslim- majority locality in Delhi where I came to understand the problems with the insider/outsider binary within academic research. I then document the dis- comforts I experienced following the completion of my PhD as a researcher located in the United Kingdom and in particular the frustrations of being framed as a ‘native informant’ while in Europe and a ‘colonised/colonising outsider’ when in South Asia. I proceed to interrogate how my sense of loca- tion shifted after moving to Pakistan, where presenting my research on Mus- lim women in India meant something very different politically. My current research involves a new set of discomforts working in a part of Karachi where