Abstract
Three fields of specialisation making up the landscape of adult education research are the regeneration of regional communities, the changing work of academics and the identities of teachers in Australia. Using the conceptual resources of place, space and inner terrain as lenses – in combination with the ethnographic notions of 'emic' and 'etic' for an additional perspective – the authors suggest ways of designing and conducting research that open the shifting sands of the three fields to interested scrutiny. This process is a necessary pathway towards disrupting current inequities and creating more transformative locations within the troubling terrain that is adult education research.