Call for Submissions

Working Paper Series: “Field Research and Ethics in Difficult Settings”

Papers accepted on a rolling basis

Lead editors: Susan Thomson, Erin Jessee, and Milli Lake

The Field Research and Ethics in Difficult Settings website is a resource for academics and practitioners to exchange ideas and experiences about research and ethics in the field. Our network of scholars, students, and practitioners is concerned with knowledge production through methodically rigorous and ethically sound field research practices.

While others subjects are welcome, we are particularly interested in submissions on the following themes as they play out in different contexts:

• Disciplinary and methodological limitations to the study of conflict and post-conflict communities
• Addressing threats to the personal safety of researchers, their research assistants, and participants
• The researcher as insider / outsider, and other reflexive analysis of research positionality
• Trigger warnings for researcher and researched
• Navigating gatekeeper and government surveillance
• Establishing and adapting informed consent
• Securing data in and after the field
• Mental illness and self-care in and after the field
• Tensions between Institutional Review Board/Research Ethics Board policies in theory and practice
• Anonymity and participant protection beyond IRB/REB policies
• Other topics not listed above are also welcome

We welcome contributions from diverse methodological and theoretical backgrounds. Each working paper will be open peer-reviewed by a minimum of two established experts in the relevant discipline and/or geographical region. Where necessary to protect the author’s confidentiality or to allow authors to speak openly about their experiences without endangering research assistants and participants, papers will be published anonymously.

Those interested in submitting a paper should send a 250-word abstract outlining their proposed contribution and a one page CV that states their contact details and affiliation to Susan Thomson.