Decolonial Research Ethics

Please note places are limited at this event, so please only book a ticket if you can guarantee your attendance.

This training session will be delivered face-to-face at the University of Sheffield. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

This workshop is dedicated to an open conversation rooted in efforts to actualise anti and decolonial critical research ethics especially in terms of collaborative fieldwork. We will discuss practical and theoretical approaches to accountability and political dynamics in ethics and research. The workshop begins from a place that recognises research participants as authorities of their own lived experiences that gives rise to the theorisations that occur in the academy. At the same time, we realise that there are practical difficulties that arise in conducting this kind of research, as with any research. Sometimes the difficulties are due to the institutions we are beholden to, and sometimes they are not. These problems might range from having the processes and procedures of ethics approval over bureaucratising the relationships of mutual care one is trying to fortify in their research to navigate the sometimes-slippery slope between engaging a topic from the point of view of activist to researcher. They include managing the terrain of trying to live feminist and/or decolonial praxes as these ways of being in the world are refracted through either untethered discourses or harmful co-opting to the detriment of marginalised populations, though of course there are a myriad of others, and we welcome you to bring your own ideas, concerns, and questions.

Learning outcomes:

• Theoretical and practical awareness and recognition of some of the ethical dilemmas connected with fieldwork.
• Applying some of the skills learned in terms of negotiating research ethics to students’ own fieldwork.
• Thinking through what anti/decolonial fieldwork can look like.

Host or Publisher White Rose DTP