Better Think Tanking #11
Better Think Tanking #11
Into the field: access, ethics, and safety
“Charging an academic researcher with espionage is a severe violation of academic freedom and calls into question the safety of all researchers who work with the UAE. […] To cast academic fieldwork as foreign espionage would only exacerbate growing international concerns about the UAE’s dedication to the freedoms of inquiry and expression.”
British PhD candidate Matthew Hedges is one of many researchers arrested during fieldwork - one lucky to have received lots of attention that led to his release. The above quote from a statement by the American Political Science Association shows: security services can pose a severe risk to the safety of fieldwork and academic freedom at large.
In this BTT issue, I - Ilyas - want to discuss fieldwork safety for researchers in think tanks and beyond. But I am not here to talk about the Indiana-Jones-style fieldwork stories that glorify danger. Instead of celebrating and reproducing the toxic masculinity that lies at the heart of bragging about dangerous situations and one’s own naïveté when it comes to fieldwork, I want to encourage thinking hard about the risks for researchers, collaborators, and respondents in the field and how to mitigate them.
Why Safer Fieldwork Matters
In 2016, PhD candidate Giulio Regeni was tortured and killed by Egyptian security forces. Until today, no one has been held responsible and the Egyptian prosecution impedes any real accountability process. Think tankers are just as prone to becoming victims of politicized persecution or kidnapping: since December 2018, Michael Kovrig is incarcerated in China on bogus espionage charges. Beyond individuals, the Chinese government put the Berlin-based think tank MERICS on a sanctions list that bans staff from entering China and criminalizes any form of cooperation between Chinese citizens or institutions and the institute.
None of the mentioned researchers is to blame for the repression they suffer(ed) at the hands of ruthless state security services or – in some cases – by non-state actors. Shaming the victims for not foreseeing the risk or for being careless means moving the responsibility away from the institutions, whose job it is to enable their researchers to conduct fieldwork missions and help them stay safe.
Making Fieldwork Safer
In response to risks, some universities securitize fieldwork, making it harder for researchers to conduct missions due to strict one size fits all regulatory, ethical, and safety frameworks. Driven by liability concerns, universities have increased administrative and procedural hurdles for field missions, effectively disincentivising risky fieldwork altogether - instead of enabling and supporting researchers to conduct their research by equipping them with the skills, equipment, and supervision needed to make fieldwork safer.
If think tanks follow the securitization trend and increase bureaucratic hurdles, access for researchers will be further limited and riskier. It might lead reckless Indiana-Jones-type researchers to pursue fieldwork without informing their supervisors and following institutional due diligence procedures, potentially increasing the number of detained researchers. While there is no silver bullet, the consequences of not supporting and enabling safer field research will be worse than wrestling with some tricky questions. Instead, think tanks should support researchers in making fieldwork safer and invest in mentoring, training, equipment, monitoring, and other support structures. Here’s how:
Stick to case-by-case decision procedures for staff’s fieldwork missions and acknowledge that the risks depend on many factors that need to be assessed individually.
Provide researchers with training, equipment, and support to assess the risks involved and develop a comprehensive risk mitigation strategy for their mission.
Institutionalize these processes transparently as mandatory steps, so that everyone knows who to turn to and how to proceed.
Don’t forget digital security! Address digital data and communication risks and help researchers communicate, store, and transfer data safely while on mission. Provide equipment and training for researchers and create in-house capacities.
Encourage knowledge- and experience-sharing through internal peer mentoring networks and contact points for fieldwork-related questions to allow for informal discussions and feedback.
Consult and involve researchers (including outside expertise if needed) in developing institutional guidance on fieldwork and safety.
Negotiating Access to the Field
Researchers need to negotiate access to the field with their employer, the authorities at the field site and their research participants before and during fieldwork. Most fieldwork trips require research visas which may be impossible to obtain for politically or otherwise controversial research. Although entering the field without an official permit comes with risks, colleagues and I have put together a fieldwork guide and argue that sometimes it is safer to go ‘undercover’, to avoid drawing unwanted attention to your research.
Institutions and researchers need to find a middle way that allows for individual assessments and solutions. A narrow legal perspective that rules out gathering data in the field without an official visa means the end of a big chunk of the research. Following this ‘by the book strategy’ limits access to information, sources, and the field, and it allows restrictive actors that don’t provide research visas or keep researchers who enter the field under surveillance to control the information on controversial issues with worrying consequences for knowledge production and academic freedom.
Here, think tanks can learn a lot from journalists and NGOs. Neither turning a blind eye nor over-regulating fieldwork missions is useful for institutions whose researchers are engaged in fieldwork. Resources like the BBC’s step-by-step guide to carrying out fieldwork are a great starting point.
Reforming Your Fieldwork
If think tanks don’t adjust their resources, processes, and policies for fieldwork missions, and turn administrational burden into support, there will be more and more places we won’t get access to. This means less understanding of local and regional dynamics and many topics will not be researched at all - with devastating consequences for knowledge production and policy recommendations grounded in conversation with local actors and information.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put much field-based research on hold. In a piece for The Conversation, I explain why field research has to return quickly and how universities and researchers can make sure that new standards do not become yet another hurdle for fieldwork access. Fieldwork has always been fraught with risk, but it remains indispensable for producing knowledge, understanding local developments and producing original policy recommendations.
What We Are Thinking About
Our colleagues who are detained because of their work.
Like What You Read?
If you have a fieldwork story to share or have ideas on how to make field research safer for researchers at think tanks tell us about it. Forward this newsletter to a friend, tweet it, and help us inspire more people.
Best,
Ilyas