Anastasia Shesterinina
This is a summary of an article published in a forum on ethics reviews in International Relations. It is published in International Studies Perspectives; the original publication can be read here.
This forum stems from such questions and a general dissatisfaction of IR scholars about the present status of institutional research ethics review. Originating from a roundtable at the ISA Annual Convention of 2023, the forum seeks to prompt a robust discussion about research ethics that gives voice to the needs of IR research both around procedural ethics and ethics in practice.
Most critically, as the forum’s contributors both individually and collectively illustrate, a one-size-fits-all approach to ethical review frequently amplifies preexisting power imbalances between research institutions, researchers, and researched populations; risks perpetuating Western-centric biases; and, most problematically, fails to adequately address the needs and expectations of the wide-ranging stakeholders in IR research.
This poses unique challenges for team-based, fieldwork intensive projects funded by nationally and internationally competitive grants – which have become widespread in the social sciences. Drawing on the experience of the multiyear, multicounrty Civil War Paths project funded by the UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship, I propose three practices particularly relevant for research ethics in such projects. These practices include flexibility in research design, ongoing reflexivity, and project updating before, during, and after fieldwork. They are rooted in the understanding that research methods and ethics are intricately related, and decisions made on the former inform and shape the latter. Through this discussion, I highlight a trade-off between the goals of prioritizing the well-being of all involved in the research and comparability expected in large projects, and point to a way in which comparative analysis can be undertaken while being true to interlocutors’ meanings, especially in relation to ethical decision-making.
Research Design
Built-in flexibility, or openness to changes in response to changing circumstances in the selected research sites, researchers’ fieldwork experiences, and theoretical development was a defining feature of the research design in this project. This could be considered a risky decision in the context of transparency debates in political science, particularly calls rooted in the positivist tradition for the preregistration of research designs in qualitative research (Jacobs et al. 2021). However, in line with interpretive approaches, a flexible research design was essential for not only exposing where the original assumptions and conceptualizations of the project fell short, but also ensuring the safety of all researchers and interlocutors (Fujii 2018, 48–9). In other words, flexibility was an ethical practice that enabled necessary changes to the project in response to emergent shared understandings in the research team.
Hence, the “cases” in this project were not predetermined. Instead, they were selected through an iterative process of deepened conceptualization of armed group origins in conversation with the existing literature, mapping contemporary civil wars according to different origins, and safety concerns (Shesterinina and Livesey 2024). This effort guided the recruitment of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers for the project.
Coordinated Fieldwork
This sensibility “that pays attention to the perspectives of the people being studied,” including about questions of risk, also guided the fieldwork process (Schatz 2009, 6). Equipped with detailed fieldwork protocols, the researchers conducted preliminary and core field trips, adapting research plans based on their awareness of changing circumstances in the field sites.
Overall, conducting coordinated fieldwork based on the shared analytical framework and fieldwork protocols that the research team developed collaboratively while being guided by ethnographic sensibility—that is, being sensitive to how interlocutors make sense of their context and especially risks associated with research in this context—generated intersecting questions in the research team as individual researchers reflected on their field experiences during and after fieldwork in field notes, conversations with collaborators and interlocutors, debriefs with team members, and short pieces of writing exploring particular challenges.
Project Comparability
The field research that the individual researchers engaged in was thus necessarily distinct, guided by shared yet evolving analytical concerns, an ethos of ethnographic sensibility, and ongoing reflexivity. This diversity of fieldwork experiences in this project reflects our careful attention to interlocutors’ own understandings, which served as our basis for ethical decision-making. Still, it comes in tension with the goal of comparability, which is often prized in large projects, such as this one. That our interviewing approach resonated with most research participants was nevertheless crucial for our ability to prioritize interlocutors’ well-being.
Most importantly, had the project been based on a fixed research design and paid little attention to the changing conditions of fieldwork, not only the production and advancement of knowledge but also research ethics could have been compromised. These issues reflect some identified in previous literature and show how the practices of flexible research design, ongoing reflexivity, and project updating before, during, and after fieldwork helped to avoid them in this project. Future team-based, fieldwork-intensive projects should thus be open to these practices as the foundation for ethical, innovative research. These practices can accordingly help to achieve comparability with contextual sensitivity across field sites while being open about the research process and changes along the way.