Post colonialist scholars have raised the critical problem of academic research being a conversation of ‘us’ with ‘us’ about ‘them’ (Grande 2004; Kelley 1997; Marker 2006). This process reproduces raced, gendered, and classed hierarchies and informs policies which too often reinforce structural and social inequalities and in this way the social sciences become complicit in producing particular types of subjects. Participatory action research’s alternative epistemological approach has profound implications for rethinking the politics of representation. Here we tease out some of the complicated questions of representation, audience, and the presentation of research to explore the slippery relations of power and place inherent in them. We share experiences from two very different US-based PAR projects with research collectives primarily composed of members from historically marginalized groups. One project was situated in New York City’s gentrifying Lower East Side neighborhood and the other took place in New York State’s Maximum Security prison for women. Through our reflections, we illustrate ways in which PAR can reposition those historically “studied” as objects of research as subjects (Freire 1997) through careful consideration of research products and their political effects.