Approach

Our approach is based on a concept of fieldwork safety that includes all aspects of researchers’ emotional and physical well-being. We see fieldwork safety as a fundamental aspect of every research project. Safe working conditions allow researchers to focus fully on their work, and provide an important basis for creating the space to address ethical and methodological considerations. To the contrary, being faced with challenging experiences can make it substantially more difficult to conduct fieldwork and analyse the collected material, particularly when the data is interwoven with traumatic memories. The impact that researcher safety has on the insights we gain, and the way we can work with them, makes safety a topic of fieldwork methodology. 

We distance ourselves from generalising concepts such as “dangerous countries,” “high-risk projects” or “hostile environments,” as this can shift blame to affected researchers or reinforce stereotypes of the people we work with (see Thurmann, 2023). It can also give a false sense of security regarding contexts that are conceptualized as “safe.”

Instead, we argue that every project entails its own risks since safety is dynamic and closely related to researchers’ intersecting positionalities, the research topic, context, and chosen methodology. This also means that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to researcher safety. Guidelines that work well for one person in one context can cause further risks for other researchers or in other contexts. To adequately address this complexity, researchers need practical tools for managing risks throughout their fieldwork, and for building and maintaining personalized safety networks tailored to their project, resources, and positionalities.

References