Short Abstract

This roundtable explores the ethical and political dimensions of researching Gaza amid ongoing genocide. It explores the ethical and political dimensions of researching Gaza amid ongoing genocide, mass displacement, and the deliberate destruction of civilian, cultural, and academic infrastructures.

Description

This rountable interrogates the ethics of researching Gaza during and after the ongoing genocide, asking what it means to produce knowledge amid systematic violence, displacement, and epistemic erasure. It explores the moral and political implications of conducting, funding, and publishing research on Gaza within a global academic system that often reproduces colonial hierarchies and humanitarian voyeurism. How can researchers avoid reinforcing power asymmetries while amplifying Palestinian voices, agency, and resistance? What are the responsibilities of scholars, institutions, and journals in contexts of active atrocity? Drawing from critical development and decolonial ethics, this discussion invites researchers, practitioners, and students to reflect on positionality, consent, representation, and harm minimization when documenting suffering and survival.

This roundtable explores the ethical and political dimensions of researching Gaza amid ongoing genocide, mass displacement, and the deliberate destruction of civilian, cultural, and academic infrastructures. The discussion interrogates how research agendas, funding frameworks, and data collection practices may inadvertently reproduce colonial hierarchies, humanitarian voyeurism, or epistemic extraction.

Anchored in decolonial, feminist, and critical development ethics, this roundtable invites reflexive dialogue between scholars, practitioners, and activists. It aims to co-produce principles for conducting ethical research on Gaza and other conflict-affected settings that centre justice, accountability, and solidarity.participants rethink the moral purpose of research itself — positioning it not as a detached pursuit of truth, but as a political and ethical act.

The roundtable will culminate in drafting a short collective statement on ethical responsibilities in researching Gaza, to inform academic institutions, funding bodies, and future development research practices.