Descriptions of the research experience are vital to ethnography and have often been mediated through the writings about the researcher 'self'. Consequently, the concept of self has taken up a central position in literature on ethnographic work. In order to renew the discussion on the ethnographic researcher position, I intend to explore further what status is given to such descriptions and notions of self. In this article I analyse how researcher identity claims were made through the practice of ethnographic description drawn from field notes produced during a study of a Swedish workplace. Building on the results of the analysis, I suggest that the ethnographic researcher will not be able to discover her self in the process of research. Rather, I argue, researcher identity is constructed in ethnographic research practice where the researcher goes into processes of identification.