Researching Peace, Conflict, and Power in the Field: Methodological Challenges and Opportunities

This edited volume offers useful resources for researchers conducting fieldwork in various global conflict contexts, bringing together a range of international voices to relay important methodological challenges and opportunities from their experiences. The book provides an extensive account of how people do conflict research in difficult contexts, critically evaluating what it means to do research in the field and what the role of the researcher is in that context. Among the topics discussed: Conceptualizing the interpreter in field interviews in post-conflict settings Data collection with indigenous people Challenges to implementation of social psychological interventions Researching children and young people’s identity and social attitudes Insider and outsider dynamics when doing research in difficult contexts Working with practitioners and local organizations Researching Peace, Conflict, and Power in the Field is a valuable guide for students and scholars interested in conflict research, social psychologists, and peace psychologists engaged in conflict-related fieldwork.

1. Research Team -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Conducting field research amid violence: Experiences from Colombia -- 3. Keepers of local know-how in conflict: Conversations between research assistant and researcher -- 4. Conceptualizing the interpreter in field interviews in post-conflict settings: Reflections from psychological research in Bosnia and Herzegovina -- 5. Doing research on Turkish-Armenian relations in Turkey, Armenia, and Diaspora as Turkish researchers: The challenges and opportunities of being an insider and outsider -- 6. Confronting Conflicting Attitudes about Racial Bias in the United States: How Communicator Identities Shape Audience Reception -- 2. Research Population -- 7. Data collection with indigenous people: Fieldwork experiences from Chile -- 8. On the borders: Research with refugees of conflict -- 9. Keeping the trust – challenges in embedding yourself in protest contexts -- 10. Conducting Field Research on Collective Victimhood in the Indian Subcontinent -- 11. Kurdish Alevis in the Turkish-Kurdish peace process: Reflections on conducting research in Turkey’s “buffer zone” -- 3. Practical Applications -- 12. Implementing Social Psychological Interventions: Challenges and Opportunities -- 13. Sense and Sensitivities: Researching children and young people’s identity and social attitudes in a divided society -- 14. The challenges and promises of using RCTs in conflict environments -- 4. Reflections and Meta-reflections -- 15. When research and experience merge: A reflexive assessment on studying peace in conflict zones -- 16. A reflection on the politics of knowledge production at South African universities: When black identity meets legacies of institutional racism -- 17. Being a wanderer, stranger, public enemy and a "useful idiot": A few personal remarks on performing and communicating psychological research in conflicted areas -- 18. Recovering the everyday in peacebuilding through reflexive praxis: An epistemic and methodological intervention -- 19. Concluding Remarks.