The Road to Darfur: Ethical and Practical Challenges of Embedded Research in Areas of Open Conflict

This chapter concentrates on Mateja Peter's experiences of doing embedded research in Darfur, Sudan. It analyzes the distances between researcher and research participants that are created through physical access restrictions to the field, which may arise from the dangers of an active conflict. It also illustrates how practical considerations of accessing sites of conflict are entangled with ethical considerations for scholarly work and for interventions. The chapter highlights how a combination of practical and ethical constraints impacts what can be said about places that are studied. It also provides a narrative of Peter's fieldwork in Darfur, laying out the context and practical considerations, as well as the ethical challenges of the research.

The Interview as a Cultural Performance and the Value of Surrendering Control

This chapter looks into Markus Göransson's reports from Tajikistan. It demonstrates how the mere use of the word “interview” could scare cautious non-elite research participants in violent and/or illiberal contexts away. It recounts Göransson's field research while being equipped with literature-based knowledge on how to conduct oral history interviews and secure the informed consent of interlocutors. The chapter explains how Göransson gathered data ad hoc, in informal, private, and often group settings, requiring flexibility and creativity on his behalf and a willingness to relinquish control of the process to some extent. It points out the deep affinities between the states' disciplining techniques and scientific research method.

On Assessing Risk Assessments and Situating Security Advice: The Unsettling Quest for ‘Security Expertise’

This chapter tackles the challenges of security in violent research contexts. It offers in-depth insights into how Judith Verwejien assessed security risks when she researched micro-dynamics of conflict in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It also details practical forms of preparation for potential harm and how to avoid it, such as analyzing patterns of kidnappings or imaging an ambush and practising how to behave in such a situation. The chapter shows that the combination of good security analysis and realistic preparations can help minimize risks even in a highly violent context such as eastern DRC. It also analyzes what counts as knowledge on security dynamics and how does this knowledge translate into guidelines for action.

A Different Form of Intervention? Revisiting the Role of Researchers in Post-war Contexts

This chapter deals with Daniela Lai's argument on the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which explains how some forms of distance between researcher and researched are created by academic research and seen as a form of intervention. It focuses on the consequences of research-as-intervention and intervention by academia that shape the very field it sets out to research. It also discusses how the over-research of certain areas of Bosnian society are experienced due to academic biases that lead to distancing. The chapter looks into another form of distancing that concerns communities, groups, and topics that are sidelined by intervention research for not being the focus of the military and political interventions. It also addresses why there are people, places, and problems that are absent and distant from fieldwork-based research in most over-researched post-conflict societies.

The Politics and Ethics of Fieldwork in Post-conflict Environments: The Dilemmas of a Vocational Approach

This chapter focuses on the field research of John Heathershaw and Parviz Mullojonov. It illustrates the slippery slope that research in violent and closed contexts can be despite complying with the tight institutional ethics and risk assessment procedures of a UK university. It refers to the case of the detention of a Tajik researcher by Tajik security agencies, which discuss the limits of the procedural approach to research ethics and security currently employed by many universities in the Global North. The chapter looks into the dilemmas of researcher and research participant safety and trade-offs between access and impartiality. It argues that conscious vocational engagement with the field can help make better choices and fully overcome the interlinked dilemmas explored.

Doing Fieldwork in Areas of International Intervention into Violent and Closed Contexts

This chapter covers experiences of doing fieldwork. It talks about a gender-balanced group of field researchers at different stages of their careers that work in different countries around the world. It also analyzes how the field researchers did their fieldwork in areas of international intervention into violent conflict and/or illiberal states. The chapter provides an overview of the frank and critical accounts of the field researchers who have taken the courage to publicly reflect upon some of their mistakes and to name the dilemmas of fieldwork in violent and closed contexts. It draws attention to the personal reflections of the field researchers' practices, performances, and positionalities in the field, including their contributions to address questions currently discussed in related literatures.

Lifting the Burden? The Ethical Implications of Studying Exemplary, Not Pathological, Wartime Sexual Conduct

This chapter examines Angela Muvumba Sellström's fieldwork and encounters with non-state armed groups in Burundi, South Africa, and Uganda that established sexual discipline among their commanders and foot-soldiers. It reflects on ethical dilemmas of conducting research on “non-cases” of wartime sexual violence among armed groups that have regulated sex in wartime conduct. It focuses on the non-use of sex as a weapon of war that may acquit armed groups from other human rights violations they may have committed. The chapter mentions some sexual-violence survivors who are unwittingly silenced by a certain research focus even after the armed groups have regulated sexual conduct. It analyzes the regulation of sexual conduct that may be based on the male leadership of the armed group rather than female sexual autonomy, which may foster entrenched gender inequalities in society.

Ten Things to Consider Before, During and After Fieldwork in a Violent or Closed Context

This chapter reviews themes that constitute ten points that all academics planning fieldwork-based research on international intervention should consider. It illustrates how even the most prepared or experienced researchers have struggled with the idea of control over the fieldwork-based research process in a closed or violent context. It also links to a broader emergent debate on researcher failure, which suggests that the perceptions of “failure” in research are not the exception but the rule. The chapter contributes to discussions of the dilemmas of balancing restrictive ethics and risk assessments of cautious universities with real risks and meaningful research in areas of international intervention. It tackles the dynamics of international organizations and actors as an integral element of challenges and dilemmas of distance and closeness.

Sex Workers and Sugar Babies: Empathetic Engagement with Vulnerable Sources

This chapter explores the perspectives on the research of wartime and intervention-related sexual violence, which has become an important subfield of conflict and intervention studies. It discusses the practicalities and ethics of research among sex workers as part of wider peacekeeping economies. It also reflects on Kathleen Jennings' research among sex workers in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where she observes a worrying proliferation of research with “victim-survivors” of wartime sexual violence. The chapter emphasizes the researchers' ethical obligation to interrogate themselves and their motives when deciding to interview members of vulnerable groups. It also critically examines the ways and limits of empathic research among vulnerable subjects and addresses practical questions of access to and compensation for research participants.

Being Watched and Being Handled

This chapter explores how risk assessments at universities in the Global North revolve around the Northern researcher and their associates and participants. It looks into the wider and longer-term consequences of researcher behaviour in the field that are less considered or understood. It also discusses Jesse Driscoll's fieldwork in the context of research in illiberal states. By employing a game-theoretical model that draws on extensive fieldwork experiences in Central Asia and the south Caucasus, the chapter shows the stakes involved in the game for two types of players: a bureaucrat in the security sector of the state where the research is taking place and a researcher who wants to publish critical aspects of the politics of the state in question. It highlights the potential dangers of academic work that interprets the role of the researcher in an oppressive context, as well as that of a social and political activist.