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- Convenors:
-
Sam Staddon
(University of Edinburgh)
Clara Calia (University of Edinburgh)
Lisa Boden (University of Edinburgh)
Liz Grant (University of Edinburgh)
Action Amos (University of Edinburgh)
Corinne Reid (Victoria University)
Abdul-Gafar Oshodi (Lagos State University)
Joseph Burke (University of Edinburgh)
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- Formats:
- Papers
- Stream:
- Global methodologies
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel explores opportunities to ‘unsettle development’ offered by interrogating and re-imagining research ethics procedures and practices. We feature contributions of progressive engagement or experiments with research ethics, which ultimately help to promote progressive global social change.
Long Abstract:
Researchers and research projects are part of, not separate from, global inequalities and relations of power, thus we must reflect on our own practices and re-imagine our procedures, in order, ultimately, to be a part of progressive global social change. In this panel we are interested in exploring opportunities to ‘unsettle development’ offered by interrogating and re-imagining research ethics procedures and practices. Formal University ethics procedures must respond to demands to tackle global injustice and inequalities, but systems and structures for supporting this are currently uneven and often inadequate. Development studies scholars are typically well prepared for and practiced in conducting ethical research, however they are increasingly joined in their endeavours by those from other disciplines and sectors, who may have less training in and/or experience of negotiating the complex situational ethics which inevitably arise in development-oriented research. Beyond the University, demands to decolonise academia apply equally to ethical procedures and practices, with indigenous peoples offering their own criteria for ethical approval of research for example. In this panel we welcome contributions from those who explore opportunities to ‘unsettle’ current research ethics, and who offer examples of progressive engagement or experiments with them.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 July, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Tomorrow’s Cities is a global interdisciplinary and collaborative research Hub working across four cities: Istanbul, Kathmandu, Nairobi, and Quito. We propose to re-imagine research ethics and “impact” through reflexivity and everyday ethics of care from a feminist and decolonial perspective.
Paper long abstract:
Tomorrow’s Cities is a global interdisciplinary research Hub working with academics, communities and policy-makers across four cities: Istanbul, Kathmandu, Nairobi, and Quito. Its main aim is to bring multi-hazard disaster risk management to the centre of urban policy and practice, and it is funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). The project mission is to generate ‘impact’ across geographical scales and actors to benefit urban communities that are most at risk. In this context, and from the start of the project, researchers across the four cities and the UK have been discussing the ethical implications, power relations and framings involved in generating ‘impact’ through co-production of knowledge, and interdisciplinary research, including participatory methods . In this presentation, we would like to explore what ‘impact’ means to us. Is there one definition of impact or can there be different pathways for each city’s authorities, for each research team, and the communities we work with? We are particularly interested in discussing how ‘impact’ translates for us into everyday tensions in our research and practices: What kind of knowledge(s) are we co-producing? Who decides when this is ‘impactful’, for whom and why? Using examples from the four cities, and from a central Hub operational perspective, we will show how we attempt to navigate these tensions and power relations through an everyday ethics of care and reflexive practices highlighted by feminist and decolonial lenses (e.g. Lawson 2007; Segato 2018; Smith 1987).
Paper short abstract:
As partners in Ecuador and the UK, we reflect on the process of creating a document of decolonial, feminist ethical principles for approaching our research project, and on how we uphold these internal commitments in the context of the formal, institutional ethical requirements we are subject to.
Paper long abstract:
In late 2019, a team of researchers and activists from Ecuador and the UK began a new oral history project, aiming to accompany Afro-Ecuadorian women in Esmeraldas province as they interrogate and articulate their history and heritage. The project, funded by the British Academy/GCRF ‘Heritage, Dignity and Violence’ programme, aims to harness Afro-Ecuadorian women’s heritage to promote sustainable development in a context characterised by violence, marginalisation and large-scale resource extraction. While the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the planned workshops and oral history interviews, it also created a space for an extended exploration of the ethics of the project. This enabled the transnational research team to undertake a collaborative process, thinking through how we will ensure that the research is truly led by its Afro-Ecuadorian participants and embedding a decolonial approach at the heart of the project. In this paper, we explore our development of a collectively authored ethics document, which stands as our ethical agreement and baseline, and a record of our joint commitment to decolonise the research process. We consider the connections and dis-connections between the document we created and formal institutional ethics procedures, and critically analyse the lived experiences of negotiating a meaningful and appropriate ethical agreement between all research partners, in the virtual platforms mandated by the current pandemic. The paper reflects upon the complex, painstaking and time-intensive work needed to interweave decolonial and feminist principles and practices with institutional ethics processes and expectations, in order to unsettle the ways in which we do development research.
Paper short abstract:
Using the ECID programme as a case study, this paper engages critically with the challenges concerning ethical practice in international development research and practice. It explores some of the challenges posed by western ethical norms and offers an innovative model for shifting power in ethics.
Paper long abstract:
This paper engages critically with the challenges concerning ethical practice in international development research and practice and how different institutional and local ethical priorities can be managed. This is explored using the Evidence and Collaboration for Inclusive Development (ECID) programme as a case study. ECID is a four-year programme, funded by the UK Government through UK Aid Connect, delivered through a consortium of nine partners led by Christian Aid, and implemented by in-country partner organisations in Myanmar, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Doing research ethically in international development goes beyond standards within academic research; it requires engaging with additional areas of expertise including risk management, safeguarding and protection, responsible data management, gender equality and social inclusion and conflict sensitivity among others. Recognising each of these spheres of expertise remain quite siloed, the paper begins by introducing an integrated ethical framework for doing development research. Following on from this, the paper explores some of the challenges that western ethical norms pose in societies with different systems of meaning-making and ethical norms. This is illustrated using ethical dilemmas raised within the Nigerian country programme. The paper concludes by offering an innovative model for shifting power in research that was piloted within the programme. This requires thinking about how ethics in development research and practice can be reviewed in organisations which typically do not have their own Ethics Review Boards and in ways which does not reproduce western hegemony in relation to whose knowledge and ethics counts in research practice.
Paper short abstract:
This study presents practical guides on how to traverse the suspicion and resentments researchers deal with when conducting research on small businesses in Africa. This paper draws from ongoing research in Nigeria that is interacting with about 200 small businesses during COVID-19.
Paper long abstract:
This study presents practical guides on how to traverse the suspicion and resentments researchers deal with when conducting research on small businesses in Africa. This draws from ongoing research in Nigeria that is interacting with about 200 small businesses to make sense of small business digital transformation during COVID-19, and in low-income country settings. Findings suggest that traditional research methods and ethics are no longer suited for contemporary research. Researchers should communicate simplicity and evidence value in a way that is clearly understood by small business owners/managers. Small business research is pivotal to solving perennial low-income country problems such as unemployment, insecurity, poverty, and hunger. Rethinking methods and ethics of small business research could enhance the validity, reliability, and impacts of contemporary research.