Experiences in Researching Conflict and Violence: Fieldwork Interrupted

This international, edited collection brings together personal accounts from researchers working in and on conflict and explores the roles of emotion, violence, uncertainty, identity and positionality within the process of doing research, as well as the complexity of methodological choices.

It highlights the researchers’ own subjectivity and presents a nuanced view of conflict research that goes beyond the ‘messiness’ inherent in the process of research in and on violence. It addresses the uncomfortable spaces of conflict research, the potential for violence of research itself and the need for deeper reflection on these issues.

This powerful book opens up spaces for new conversations about the realities of conflict research. These critical self-reflections and honest accounts provide important insights for any scholar or practitioner working in similar environments.

Althea-Maria Rivas is a Lecturer in the Department of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. She is also a Research Associate at the Harriet Tubman Institute at York University. Her research interests are race and global politics, gender (in)security and development, humanitarian intervention and post-conflict reconstruction, migration, feminist and postcolonial theory and pedagogy.

Brendan Ciarán Browne is an Assistant Professor in Conflict Resolution and Research Fellow at the Trinity College Dublin Centre for Post-Conflict Justice. His research interests centre on conflict transformation in Northern Ireland and Palestine where he has conducted extensive fieldwork with political representatives, youth and community workers, NGOs and former combatants.