Description
This paper is an engagement with ‘vulnerable research’ as a methodology for researching climate politics. It engages two literatures: on embracing vulnerability in research (Lisle 2016; Page 2017; Eriksen 2022), and decolonising research methods, particularly in the Pacific (McDonnell and Regenvanu 2022; Boer Cueva et al. 2023; Farbotko et al. 2023). I argue for taking a vulnerable approach to research, embracing vulnerability and humility as method in order to challenge the embedded binary of the Vulnerable Research Object / Invulnerable Researcher. This binary reproduces masculine, colonial assumptions about how climate can be known, but also fantasies of safety and unsafety (Weatherill 2023). For climate change, vulnerable research is a particularly important approach, as the hubristic need to be the person in the vulnerable places, doing the research, is itself vulnerabilising in its environmental harms. I therefore argue that vulnerable vulnerability research requires trust, delegation, and a decentring of the research expert. This would also enable a realignment of knowledge and expertise which is needed for decolonising climate research.
