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Paper short abstract

The paper reflects on ethical discomfort before research begins. Written by a Syrian researcher in the UK, it explores imagining the field from afar, fractured positionality, &the unease of asking Syrian women for accounts of suffering amid war. Should this research be done? By whom? On whose terms?

Paper long abstract

This paper emerges from a moment of ethical suspension: before research design, before ethics approval, and before any participant has been approached. Written from the position of a Syrian researcher living in the UK, it reflects on the ethical unease of contemplating research with women who remain in Syria, while witnessing renewed violence from afar. The paper is grounded in the discomfort of imagining the field rather than entering it, anticipating questions not yet asked, and harms that might be reanimated through research itself. Much of the research ethics literature positions ethics as a procedural concern that becomes relevant once a project is defined. This paper challenges that framing by foregrounding the pre-conceptual moment as a site of intense ethical labour, where the central question is not how to conduct research ethically, but whether one has the moral right to conduct it at all. At this stage, ethics is affective, embodied, and lived – felt through guilt, hesitation, grief, and the unease of occupying relative safety while imagining the asking for accounts of suffering from those who are not safe. Using a fragmented autoethnography, the paper explores positionality as fractured and unstable, resisting closure and certainty as a way of practising care. Rather than offering solutions or guidelines, the paper argues for the legitimacy of ethical discomfort and unresolvedness. It proposes ethics as a living, relational practice that begins long before institutional approval – and sometimes requires restraint, delay, or refusal as ethical outcomes in themselves.