Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores the application of a novel, situated ethics framework in international development research.

Paper long abstract:

Euro-American based researchers engaging with participants in the so-called global South often encounter ethically dilemmas which confound and contest the guidance laid out in researchers’ institutional or disciplinary codes of ethics. At the very least, the inability to take appropriate ethical action during ethically challenging moments results in frustration – for researchers and participants – which jeopardizes the research. This presentation draws from a paper-in-progress that discusses a participant-centred, virtue ethics approach, the Ọmọlúàbí moral-ethical framework, which incorporates participants’ moral virtues within an ethical research framework to better manage ethical dilemmas, particularly those that arise within participants’ settings. It demonstrates how the framework was methodically applied during doctoral research in rural Yorùbá school-communities in North central Nigeria through the principles of continuity; adherence to local and national processes; adaptation to participants’ ways of being and doing; and provision of tangible benefit. Moreover, the presentation explores the tensions that emerge between diverse ethical traditions and provides practical suggestions for researchers who wish to conduct moral and ethical fieldwork in similar contexts.