Description
In this presentation, I reflect on ethical approval processes at universities in the Global North for qualitative research on and in conflict contexts. Drawing on own experience and semi-structured conversations with some PhD colleagues researching fragile and conflict-affected contexts in the Global South, I examine the tension between ethics and liability and the ways in which ethics procedures risk turning into a bureaucratic box ticking exercise, if not also a tool of exclusion and silencing of those most affected and marginalized. The paper addresses questions around autonomy, agency, ethics of care and justice in doing research in and with communities affected by conflict and human rights violations.
It asks the following questions: 1) whose interest is at the heart of the process? 2) what assumptions demarcate the assessment and how that direct, and/or dictate, the research design? And 3) what measures are undertaken to ensure appropriate application of the pre-ordinate ethics?
Through re-posing some of the basic questions, the paper aims to revisit some of the commonsensical ethical dilemmas while at the same time argue for the integration of a Deleuzian understanding of immanent ethics into ethical clearance regimes at the universities.
