Lessons from interdisciplinary qualitative research: learning to work against a single story

In this article, we consider the everyday practices and methodological and theoretical tensions of interdisciplinary, qualitative work. In particular, we discuss the varied interpretations of focus group data from Burundian men and women with refugee status and explore the consequences of representations that result in deficit-based understandings. We highlight how through our research process we learned that following participants, rather than leading with our disciplines, deepened our understanding and complicated our representations.