This paper explores narratives as an effective means of capturing multiple identities of research participants in complex social environments in education research. In doing so, it explores the role of the narrator in two case studies in two modes of narrative inquiry. Both studies present narratives of young people, focusing on multiple identities which are influenced by a variety of cultural and sub-cultural contexts which the participants inhabit to varying degrees. In the first case study, the researcher is the narrator; in the second, it is the research participants. The paper uses the two case studies to discuss three challenging areas in narrative research: participant voice, contextual complexities and researcher positionality and how the researcher responds to these challenges through construction and co-construction of the narratives. The authors share their strategies for addressing these three challenges in relation to the role of the narrator.