North-South research collaboration during complex global emergencies: Qualitative knowledge production and sharing during COVID-19 1

Abstract

Large multinational teams of academics and activist-practitioners that span the Global North-South divide have become common in qualitative research because of the reliance of field of peace and conflict studies on “local” knowledge and expertise. Complex global emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, present the opportunity to (re)shape and (re)consider these endeavors in key some ways. This article focuses on the involvement of South-based activist-practitioners in three large North-South collaborations, one pre-pandemic (Beyond Words: Implementing Latin American Truth Commission Recommendations), one ongoing when the pandemic began (Gender, Justice, and Security Hub), and one launched during the pandemic (Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence: African and Latin American Experiences). Drawing on center-periphery framework, we adopt an autoethnographic approach, to reflect on how the pandemic has not only reinforced existing structural and institutional asymmetries through reduced funding, professional uncertainty, and personal loss and insecurity but also added some new ethical concerns. This reality has tested both our capacity and commitment to work toward the decolonization of knowledge in the field. In making this argument, we seek to contribute to the discussion on research ethics and the politics of knowledge production and sharing in qualitative peace and conflict research.

Introduction

The field of peace and conflict studies has historically relied on networks of (inter)national professionals, activist-practitioners, policymakers, academics, and victims (Larivière et al., 2015; see also Keck and Sikkink, 1999; Zvobgo, 2021). These relationships, which often span the Global North-South divide, are increasingly important for qualitative research since a connection to field sites is (perceived to be) the gold standard for rigorous and reliable work (Adams, 2012). ² Yet, tensions arising from power differentials and hierarchical relations inevitably affect such collaborations (Cronin-Furman and Lake, 2018; Roll and Swenson, 2019). Post/decolonial critiques of knowledge production have emphasized how the field is marked by knowledge imperialism (Kagoro, 2012) and agents of knowledge production and dissemination are stratified, and their expertise—valued based on how they are perceived by members of the system (Demeter, 2019). Thus, many researchers and commentators see Global North scholars as a “cadre of ‘foreign’ experts, specialists and scholars…let loose on the Global South” (Dei and Anamuah-Mensah, 2014: 30) to the detriment of locally based activist-practitioners, whose insights are sidelined at best or appropriated without due credit at worst (Bacevic, 2021; Mwambari, 2019).

In this article, we deploy an autoethnographic approach to jointly reflect on the challenges and opportunities of decolonizing research arising from the COVID-19 pandemic for qualitative fieldwork-based projects in this field (Jiménez Arrobo and Beltrán Conejo, 2021; Krause et al., 2021; Mwambari et al., 2022; Myers et al., 2020; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017; Reed-Danahay, 1997). We recognize that the pandemic (like other sustained global crises) primed the field for deeper conversations about knowledge production and sharing (Jones and Lühe, 2021b; Rudling, 2021), but remain skeptical that it will represent a positive inflection point for long-term changes in research scripts, relationships, and practices. The “distanced research” (Mwambari et al., 2022) imposed by the social distancing measures and travel restrictions in the pandemic's first phase (re)newed concerns about positionality, contrasting uses of agency, and uneven capacity for voice, given the power differentials associated with disparities in healthcare provision, socioeconomic positions, and research roles. However, the latter phase of the pandemic (starting in 2021)—dominated by a global vaccine inequity—created intensified skepticism about the possibility of achieving more horizontal and equitable center-periphery partnerships in research.

We draw on our experiences with three large collaborative endeavors that engaged Global South-based activist-practitioners and partners. Each project (broadly speaking) involved qualitative “conflict fieldwork” (Browne, 2020) and, like much collaborative research in peace and conflict studies, drew on a variety of personal and professional entanglements (Bacevic, 2021; Orellana Matute, 2021). These projects were each at a different stage when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. Our use of the term activist-practitioner highlights the mixed identities of our collaborators as well as the situational nature of these identifiers (Cabanes Ragandang, 2021; Dickinson et al., 2020; Sultana, 2007). The pandemic revealed that many divisions in this type of research are highly porous and temporary in this age of globalization (Eggeling, 2023). Nevertheless, the pandemic's primary (and most worrying) long-term effect is that it reinforced preexisting structural and institutional asymmetries. Reduced funding, professional uncertainty, and personal loss and insecurity tested the capacity and commitment of those involved in research in the field to work toward the decolonization of knowledge. Ultimately, the pandemic's radical transformative potential was undermined by the position that field-based qualitative research should “wait out” the emergency for an eventual “return to normal.”

The article unfolds in five sections. The first discusses our use of autoethnography as well as how we conceptualize the decolonization of knowledge production in this context. The next section reviews ongoing debates about research ethics and the politics of knowledge, as foregrounded by the pandemic (Jones, 2015; Villamil, 2021) and introduces the three collaborations. The following two sections use the center-periphery framework to reflect on activist-practitioners’ “local” knowledge (Mitchell, 2012) and on how the pandemic affected these collaborations where they were involved in (Asiamah et al., 2021). The final section offers lessons for future collaborations.

Decolonizing research and autoethnography

Decolonial scholars, such as Maori anthropologist Smith (1999: 2), invite us to see “research as a significant site of struggle between the interests and ways of knowing of the West and the interests and ways of knowing of the Other.” Peace and conflict studies have been historically linked to Western imperialism, colonialism, and globalization, which defined non-Western people as objects of study in need of civilization. Thus, the commitment to decolonizing research is an ontological, epistemological, ethical, and political project (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2019; Smith, 1999). It relies on a simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of knowledge that goes beyond the veneer of “objective and technical issue[s] of research procedures and technologies of gathering data” to view research as “always shot through by complex questions of power, identity, values, and ethics” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2019: 481). Deconstructing the imperial model of research centers and respects non-Western ways of thinking and doing. To achieve such epistemic freedom, we must abandon straitjacket methodologies handed down by Euro-American scholars via the European Enlightenment tradition of a science of knowability (Smith, 1999). We must “shift the identity of [the] object [of research] to reposition those who have been objects of research into questioners, critics, theorists, knowers, and communicators” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017: 4). Decolonization recasts knowledge production as an enterprise to improve the human condition of the researched over that of the researcher. ³

Auto-ethnography—while not a decolonial methodology—enables us to self-reflexively ask what decolonizing knowledge production means in the context of North-South collaboration. Reed-Danahay (1997: 4) describes autoethnography as a “variety of genres of self-representation” that are crucially concerned with “questions of identity and selfhood, of voice and authenticity, and of cultural displacement and exile.” For her, the main features of autoethnography are the perspective of a “boundary-crosser” and auto-ethnographers’ “dual identity.” The practice of autoethnography allows us to “zoom backward and forward, inward and outward, [making the] distinctions between the personal and cultural…blurred” (Ellis and Bochner, 2000: 739). Autoethnographic writing is varied (Spry, 2001), but generally draws on the writers’ own life experiences to reflect on problems affecting a wider group they are involved in and its practices (Denzin, 1989).

As scholars who occupy an array of interstices between different (types) of boundaries, autoethnography allows us to peel back our “multiple layers of consciousness” (Ellis and Bochner, 2000, 739). In different personal and professional circumstances, we may be best characterized as insiders, outsiders, or something in between (Dwyer and Buckle, 2009). We have (repeatedly) crossed the borders between North and South and those between academia, activism, and practice. The resulting mesh of entanglements was critical during the pandemic. Since the four of us were differently situated throughout the pandemic, with the travel restrictions physically isolating some of us from the “field” and essentially entrapping others there, this article allows us to discuss how we reconsidered our fieldwork practices throughout this period. As we struggled to morally and ethically adapt to this complex global emergency, our values, the meaning(s) associated with peace and conflict research, and the engagement of local activist-practitioners and other partners in fieldwork were called into question.

Knowledge production and sharing

There are several perennial debates on research ethics and the politics of knowledge in peace and conflict research, including concerns about the racialized distribution of roles and vulnerabilities of colonial knowledge production (Bisoka, 2020: 1) and the need to center non-European modes of thinking, doing, and representing (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020). Post/decolonial critiques—including our classic rendering of the center-periphery framework ⁴ —utilize geographical and social understandings of the institutions and individuals who populate them (Demeter, 2019) to challenge knowledge production systems where “the center of knowledge…about people or community is located outside the community or people themselves” (Nobles, 1976: 16).

Formal roles as PIs or activist-practitioners mainly involved in data collection in collaborations often take advantage of members’ institutional links as they personally and professionally transition across the North-South divide. Organizational arrangements made in grant applications routinely formally acknowledge and use, rather than challenge, the unequal privileges of North-based academics’ in accessing and managing research. Project leaders’ attentiveness to the politics and processes of knowledge production and how they collectively act to recognize and position the contributions of South-based activist-practitioners is key for post/decolonial scholars (Mwambari, 2019). Unfortunately, North-based academics are commonly situated at the center of collaborations that produce knowledge about and for the periphery. Funders driving peace and conflict research agendas are both physically proximate to North-based academics and share common discourses (Jones and Lühe, 2021a: 247; Jamar, 2017; Krystalli et al., 2021). Colonial and imperialist notions of (scientific) respectability render South-based activist-practitioners less visible to funders and the international institutions promoting interventions in conflict-affected Global South areas (Demeter, 2019). This means that North-based participants generally provide theory and make project decisions (Jones, 2015; Jones and Lühe, 2021b; Jones et al., 2021), while South-based counterparts contribute personal and professional networks, experience, local reputation, and (everyday) knowledge of context—all of which are assumed to be atheoretical unprocessed insights (Cronin-Furman and Lake, 2018; Mwambari, 2019). In extreme cases of epistemic positioning, North-based academics may even appropriate South-based activist-practitioners’ work through erasure; however, the more typical practice of nonattribution has equally damaging consequences (Bacevic, 2021).

The COVID-19 pandemic lent renewed importance to these discussions. For instance, Krause et al. (2021: 264) discuss the importance of “contingency planning…how cyberspace has increasingly become ‘the field’…and how scholars can build lasting, mutually beneficial partnerships with ‘field citizens’.” Similarly, the US Social Sciences Research Council supported a dialogue on pandemic-related disruptions. ⁵ Some qualitative researchers wondered whether fieldwork “needs to be reinvented, hands-off modes need to be found to replace face-to-face research, or ethnographers need to reskill as they shift their research away from in-person interaction” (Eggeling, 2023: 2; see also Boéri and Giustini, 2024; DeHart, 2020; Hjalmarson et al., 2020; Howlett, 2022; Kim et al., 2023; Marzi, 2023). Other observers feared that “journals, fellowships, and hiring and tenure committees will continue to increase their expectations with regard to quality and quantity of scholarship” despite the COVID-19-related disruptions, a weak job market, and dwindling research funds (Krause et al., 2021: 264).

Some researchers considered this crisis to be an opportunity to ask more fundamental questions (Fontes, 2020; Hall et al., 2021; Rechsteiner and Sneller, 2021). For instance, Bisoka (2020: 1) wonders “why COVID-19 has not become an ‘event’ for Western social researchers to radically reverse the normal order of things,” including the exploitation of “certain bodies for research purposes.” Similarly, Krause et al. (2021: 266) ask whether the pandemic could be “an opportunity for collaborative agenda setting and knowledge production; designing more nimble research; and rectifying practical, structural, and labour inequalities that have been overlooked for too long.” As Cronin-Furman and Lake (2018), Mwambari (2019), and Scerri et al., (2020: 1571), we argue in this article that “we can do better” for activist-practitioners involved in qualitative peace and conflict research if we use this “tragic serendipity” (Eggeling, 2023: 2) to fundamentally (re)consider our research practices and advance the collective political project of decolonizing knowledge.

Certainly, the events since March 2020 have “take[n] the world to a crossroads where crucial and difficult decisions have to be taken so as to find a way out” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020: 378). To better understand what this complex global emergency might mean for the peace and conflict studies, we conceptualize the pandemic in two stages, with the widespread availability of vaccines in the Global North in early 2021 being the dividing line (Watson et al., 2022). In the initial stage, the pandemic illuminated how divisions between North-based academics and South-based activist-practitioners were more porous than the classic renderings of the center-periphery model would suggest because such identities and locations are more transient in this age of globalization. Travel bans and lockdowns restricted access to field sites and necessitated an increased reliance on South-based members. The “digitalization” of fieldwork of this phase also imposed a double burden on South-based collaborators to leverage their expertise and creativity to deliver on new targets and outcomes agreed with project funders in the midst of extensive budget cuts (Allam et al., 2020; Dodez, 2021; Hall et al., 2021; Rechsteiner and Sneller, 2021; Reynolds, 2021; Mwambari et al., 2022). This created a subtle shift in power relations between North and South and academics and activist-practitioners. Yet, unequal access to communication technology, personal insecurity, government surveillance (Allam et al., 2020; Mwambari et al., 2022), and limited domestic mobility affected South-based partners’ willingness and ability to participate in research in this new format on equal terms.

Once vaccines became widely available in the Global North and travel restrictions were gradually lifted, we entered the second phase of the pandemic. The conversation in qualitative peace and conflict research moved away from digitalization and North-based scholars’ ethical responsibilities to a field they were forced to exit (Knott, 2019). Instead, we began to reflect on accepted and acceptable research scripts and relationships in light of vaccine inequality (Rudling, 2021). Paradoxically, this phase also opened space for analysis and reflection on our initial responses to the pandemic. While long-standing professional relationships, personal ethical commitments, and fluctuating identities went some way to challenge the (most pernicious) effects of the pandemic, they could also be counterproductive to the long-term goal of decolonizing knowledge. As some of the most dramatic effects of the pandemic were gradually contained, at least in the Global North, due to the availability of vaccines, this phase of the pandemic allowed the peace and conflict studies field to better question “essentialist infantilizing portrayals” that cast “the locals” “as ubiquitously powerless vis-à-vis the researcher…the only powerful actor in this dyad” (Schulz, 2021: 552). We then realized that our rushed coping strategies of the first phase, even when most well-meaning, threatened to depoliticize this global emergency and divert attention from the long-term actions required for the commitment to decolonization to become a reality.

Overall, the pandemic reminded us that the decolonization of knowledge is a political undertaking that requires fundamental transformations, particularly in relation to the redistribution of research resources, horizontalization of decision-making, and the valuation of South contributions to qualitative research. These issues are inextricably linked to global structures of inequality, so reflexive research practices alone can do little to alter them. Unfortunately, commitments to Global South struggles and solidarity were rarely backed by substantive action in peace and conflict studies throughout the pandemic. Many North-based qualitative researchers’ vows of solidarity and mutual support to their South-based partners gradually crumbled under the weight of personal and professional crises and COVID-related stresses and uncertainties. Eventually, the field began waiting to return to prepandemic normalcy, further undermining the task of decolonizing research.

These issues played out in the three North-South collaborations we were involved throughout the pandemic. The first collaborative project, Beyond Words: Implementing Truth Commission Recommendations in Latin America, ⁶ was a prepandemic examination of truth commissions’ recommendations. The second, the Gender, Justice and Security Hub ⁷ (or, the Hub), encompassed 32 projects aiming to understand how gender justice and inclusive security can be promoted in conflict-affected societies; it was ongoing when the pandemic began. The final project, which began during the pandemic in late 2021, examined how truth commissions engage with conflict-related sexual violence under the title Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence: African and Latin American Experiences. ⁸

Beyond Words (launched in 2015, with fieldwork completed in 2017) was an ambitious endeavor to empirically trace the fate of nearly 1000 recommendations issued by 13 Latin American truth commissions. The project was funded by the Norwegian Research Council and led by three North-based scholars who utilized long-standing relationships with three Latin American organizations dedicated to sociolegal research and transformation. The fieldwork primarily consisted of semistructured interviews and archival research. Additional academic researchers Adriana Rudling provided further support. The project was in the publication stage when the pandemic began.

The Hub was launched in 2019 after receiving a five-year grant from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). This collaboration, which was based at the London School of Economics (LSE) Centre for Women, Peace and Security, emphasized direct engagement by South-based scholars and activist-practitioners. Its diverse projects addressed governance, the (in)direct victims of forced disappearance, reconciliation, land, and women's rights across four thematic and two cross-cutting streams. The Hub's commitment to feminist research methods and advocacy sought to amplify the voices of women and marginalized groups and affect policy change in its priority countries (Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, and Uganda). Around 80 researchers (local and global civil society, practitioners, governments, and international organizations) from North and South-based institutions are responsible for the research. These projects were at different stages in early 2020 and, therefore, were affected in different ways, as will be further discussed below.

The Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence project was also funded by the Norwegian Research Council and launched in October 2021. The three PIs are split between North and South. The project examines the (lack of) connections between more than 30 African and Latin American truth commissions and the development of international norms on conflict-related sexual violence. It uses secondary data to build a database of these truth commissions complemented by thick descriptions, which necessitates select qualitative data collection. As with Beyond Words, the South-based organizations and activist-practitioners have long-standing professional relationships with the PIs and long histories of research and campaigning for peacebuilding. Although funding was approved in December 2020, the pandemic delayed the project's official launch and ultimately extended the project to December 2024.

Activist-practitioners in the three collaborations

Activist-practitioners and academics involved in the same research collaborations often respond to different (sometimes conflicting) concerns and may possess divergent standards of knowledge production and sharing. This is a result of a number of factors, including the formal roles specified by funding applications for each of these two groups, their different personal and professional circumstances and their different formal training and backgrounds. Activist-practitioners, especially when working in civil society organizations, must respond to a variety of stakeholders beyond the research project, work within their organizational structure and mission, and navigate local political developments. Academics’ institutional contracts also specify a variety of other activities, notably teaching and administration. Thus, for both groups, research collaboration is but one responsibility that must be harmonized with other priorities, including reassessed personal and safety concerns during COVID-19.

The majority of PIs in these three collaborations are (currently) best understood as academics situated (if temporarily) in the Global North, while the majority of data collection work was carried out by South-based activist-practitioners. From the moment of application, many of those involved (including us) made strategic use of our multiple and overlapping identities (e.g., professional roles, race, nationality, political ideology) and drew from personal and professional networks to access the dense lattice of relationships beyond and above the state. For instance, some Hub members began collaborating through the Justice, Conflict, & Development Network, which brought together 18 academics, practitioners, and civil society partners from Colombia, Sri Lanka, Syria, and Uganda. ⁹ The North-based PIs of both Beyond Words and Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence had long-standing relationships with their South-based partners and each other. Such professional entanglements and fluctuating identities laid the groundwork for expectations, norms of interaction, and rich and trusting relationships (Jones et al., 2021: 49) that helped challenge some (pernicious) effects of asymmetries (Datta, 2019) in the first stage of the pandemic, as will be further explained below.

Beyond Words had the starkest North-South divide and deepest chasm between “local” activist-practitioners and North-based academics of the three collaborations we discuss. Both Beyond Words and Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence were largely devised without input from South-based activist-practitioners. However, the latter's research design showcases more complex institutional arrangements, collaborator identities, and dissemination activities that aim to empower partners and transcend the minimalist (oftentimes extractivist) logic of “do no harm” (Blee, 1993). Conversely, South-based activist-practitioners’ contribution to Beyond Words was largely confined to a mid-project workshop in Peru that resulted in small adjustments to the research strategy. ¹⁰ Additionally, one of the two books from Beyond Words (Skaar et al., 2022a, 2022b) consisted of country case studies written by collaborators, including activist-practitioners. To date, the follow-up studies have not involved South-based partners (Centeno Martín et al., 2022; Wiebelhaus-Brahm and Wright, 2021; Wiebelhaus-Brahm et al., 2023). The language barriers that prevented more horizontal relationships and the inclusion of South-based partners in publications will likely also affect Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence. Peace and conflict fieldwork must further reflect on how to avoid this situation, whereby knowledge of local languages—an expertise necessary for North-South collaborations (Datta and Sigdel, 2016)—becomes an obstacle to the decolonization of knowledge.

The Hub is the most complex collaboration. While North-based academics are still largely responsible for the design, findings, and dissemination, some projects are directly led by South-based researchers. Similarly, the Executive Group, which periodically meets to discuss the project direction, is composed of PIs from around the world. Following its feminist ethics, the Hub consciously pursues more horizontality in decision-making and research practices and paid special attention to the well-being of all partners involved (Levy Paluck, 2009). Some working relationships in the Hub originated from members’ prior personal affinities and professional contacts, while others were established during a prepandemic in-person planning session that boosted relationships and gave partners insights into each other's personal and professional commitments (Ansoms et al., 2021). Importantly, it is worth keeping in mind that even before the pandemic such in-person meetings were affected by burdensome immigration proceedings that disadvantaged participants from the South, particularly when seeking entry to the North.

All Hub projects involve work with policymakers, government officials, and civil society organizations, so collaborators often leveraged personal and professional histories of activism and practice. Activist-practitioners were part of the research design, data collection, and analysis, so the resulting publications carry the names of all those involved regardless of their Hub role. Training and mentoring schemes—senior-to-junior, North-to-South-to-North, and intra-South—were also developed. One of the Hub projects, titled “Land Policy, Gender and Plural Legal Systems,” on which Mohamed Sesay is a PI, exemplifies these multiple entanglements. From the design phase, this project relied on the personal and professional relationships the two Sierra Leonean PIs developed long before they received PhD training and became academics in the Global North. The project sought to promote Sierra Leonean women's tenurial rights through engagements and inclusive collaboration with the local NGO Timap for Justice and other local researchers, activist-practitioners, policymakers, and conflict-affected communities. From the conceptualization stage, ideas were balanced between ongoing debates in the country, the needed policy changes, and secondary academic literature advanced by the PIs. Their established relationships helped overcome some of the structural and institutional barriers that became more pressing during the first phase of the pandemic, as will be shown below.

The pandemic's effects on the three collaborations

By the time, the WHO officially declared the pandemic, activist-practitioners were no longer actively involved in Beyond Words beyond occasional clarifications for the final book edits. Like many North-based academics (Krause et al., 2021), the PIs welcomed the availability of this data until digital research was introduced in the first phase of the pandemic (Hall et al., 2021; Mwambari et al., 2022; Schick, 2020). Nevertheless, differences in caring responsibilities and variations in professional duties and incentive structures tied to career stage and affiliation imposed different burdens on both sides of the divide. For North-based academics, online events, digital research, and remote teaching reduced health risks but increased workloads, particularly for women (Ali and Ullah, 2021; Allam et al., 2020). However, time not spent on fieldwork, conferences, and speaking engagements allowed for follow-up studies that benefited the North-based coauthors. For the South-based activist-practitioners, reengagement with these outputs nearly four years after they were drafted imposed unexpected burdens. This first phase of the pandemic was dominated by an acute sense of uncertainty. Social distancing and rolling lockdowns were coupled with unrelenting imagery of mass death and illness that made the future hard to imagine and the present haunting even in the Global North (Han et al., 2021). South-based partners’ efforts were particularly noteworthy given that many civil society organizations were also affected by funding cuts, job losses, and shifting objectives and activities (Linc, 2020), not to mention rising poverty levels and widening inequality between North and South (Egger et al., 2021; Sánchez-Páramo et al., 2021). Thus, it is safe to say the pandemic reinforced North-South power differentials for Beyond Words.

Despite being finalized three months after the pandemic began, the funding application for Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence (where Adriana Rudling is a postdoctoral researcher) did not explicitly mention any mitigation plans. Yet, most of the proposed research was desk-based and embraced the digital approach (Eggeling, 2023; Howlett, 2022; Kim et al., 2023; Silverman, 2020; Marzi, 2023). Once travel restrictions were rolled back, rapidly shifting, strict, and country-specific rules for entry were added to the usual visa requirements, imposing even higher burdens on South-based activist-practitioners. The conversion of local vaccine certificates (if and when vaccines became widely available in the Global South) to internationally accepted passes was challenging, especially for those who received Russian or Chinese-produced vaccines. This added to the already apparent and sustained problem of vaccine inequity between North and South (Pilkington et al., 2022). Travel costs also increased as flights became more expensive (Glusac, 2021), COVID-19 tests were required, and strict, lengthy quarantines were imposed. Additionally, carer responsibilities and competing professional obligations did not always allow for lengthy stays abroad. The extension from the Norwegian Research Council, which deferred the end of Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence, offered some sensitivity to the concerns of activist-practitioners at the periphery.

Arguably, the Hub was most dramatically affected by the pandemic, as its research was in full swing by March 2020. In the first phase of the pandemic, travel restrictions interrupted the periodic Hub-wide conventions—one of its main activities and an important space for reflection, exchanging ideas, and developing relationships inclusive of South-based activist-practitioners. Notably, digital competencies facilitated more frequent and inexpensive exchanges in some cases. However, UKRI also cut funding by 75% in early 2021 for the 2021–2022 fiscal year. This left the Hub Executive Group in the difficult position of determining which projects to pause. UKRI eventually reinstated most of the funding after the pandemic entered its second stage but made the final year of the collaboration contingent on meeting some modified targets. Finally, Hub projects (including those we were involved in) were forced to substantially reimagine themselves (Kim et al., 2023; Marzi, 2023) and identify unexpected funding sources to salvage ongoing research while adapting methodologies to virtual and desk-based formats (Mwiine and Ahikire, 2022). Perhaps the most creative methodological adaptation in the pandemic's first phase was in a small Pakistani community of weaver women who kept research going by speaking to neighbors from their roofs to comply with social distancing (Hussain, 2021).

The Hub project on donor funding and transitional justice processes (where Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm is a PI) shifted to secondary data, as it was still in the early phases in March 2020, reflecting the feasibility concern of Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence. This project also abandoned an ambition to establish partnerships with Southern activist-practitioners, turning instead to an alliance with a North-based NGO to survey Northern donor governments. Angelika Rettberg's project on the political economy of reconciliation in Colombia dropped the implementation of a nation-wide representative survey due to funding cuts and instead utilized data collected by a complementary project funded from a different source. Outreach, impact, and dissemination work with policymakers, journalists, and civil society organizations occurred through numerous online workshops, social and news media outlets, and other avenues. A bilingual Spanish-English edited volume was published in print and online to reach audiences across the North-South divide (Rettberg and Ugarriza, 2023). While original plans had to be altered, the virtuous collaboration and cost-sharing with North-based Hub scholars allowed this project to go ahead and meet the funder-adjusted targets in 2022.

Fieldwork was ongoing for the Hub project on land rights and gender justice in Sierra Leone and Uganda (where Mohamed Sesay is a PI). Most of its data collection and dissemination activities were canceled or significantly scaled back during the first phase of the pandemic. Converting to virtual events or digitalizing fieldwork was not an option since internet access was too poor across the different categories of stakeholders. Uganda was dropped as a comparative case and the planned research relationship between local activist-practitioners and the North-based PIs in Sierra Leone was altered. The data collection effort in Sierra Leone (almost 130 interviews) was nearly complete by the second stage of the pandemic thanks to the commitment, capacity, and sustained efforts of the locally based Timap for Justice and other research assistants. Such reliance and confidence in local partners demonstrated that activist-practitioners “are not only and always in a subordinate position in relation to researchers [and] can negotiate and challenge conventional and uni-directional axes of power,” even in the midst of crises (Thapar-Björkert and Henry, 2004: 273).

The Hub took the most decided steps toward more equitable working relationships of the three collaborations discussed here. However, even its promise was jeopardized as the pandemic complicated collaborators’ aspirations and commitments to bridge divides. The pandemic, particularly in the first phase, exacerbated preexisting concerns and asymmetries around known “practical” coordination dilemmas. While the Hub's public virtual panels kept attention on the Global South partnerships, opportunities were limited by language barriers and unequal access to funding, health care and decision-making spaces. These issues—which were also present during the in-person prepandemic meetings—were amplified by connectivity issues that affected South-based attendees and audiences. South-based collaborators saw their voice and agency restricted by these new expressions of structural disadvantage (Bradley, 2007). Moreover, collaborators were confronted with additional ethical preoccupations arising from COVID-19-associated personal hardships that were equally difficult to talk about and difficult to abstract from (see Han et al., 2021). While North-based academic collaborators certainly drew some benefits from their location, images of mass graves, mobile morgues, and funerals with no attendees illustrated their relative safety and security (Shammas, 2021). Many South-based partners dealt with loss on a larger scale, which was compounded by the conflict-related harms they were studying, some governments’ denial of the crisis, and related security problems (UN WFP and IOM, 2020). The most dramatic example of the adversities faced by South-based partners during this time comes from one of the countries of research for the Hub. The pandemic's second phase also marked the 2021 Taliban takeover of Kabul, which prompted serious efforts to support the emigration and asylum of locally based Afghan colleagues. ¹¹

Overall, the crisis and its differentiated effects were slowly depoliticized in the second phase of the pandemic, revealing the difficulty (if not implausibility) of decolonizing center-periphery relations. The unequal distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, which was at least initially understood as political, gradually gave way to calls for a return to prepandemic normalcy in the field of peace and conflict studies. However, it is incumbent upon collaborators in these projects to go beyond merely “waiting out the crisis” and incorporate reflections on it into their work, especially in those countries where research in ongoing for the Hub and Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence. For instance, Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence sought new opportunities for activist-practitioners to affect the design and outcomes of the project despite the generally acknowledged dimming prospects for shifts in research scripts and relationships in the field in the moment of writing. Notwithstanding the exhaustion of the last years, this project reshaped its research and joint media strategy to include the recent truth commission from The Gambia, as advised by the Global South partners.

Final reflections and recommendations

This article described three collaborations to understand how, if at all, COVID-19 drove more equitable qualitative research, data collection, and analysis in peace and conflict studies. Despite the pandemic being the focus in the article, we believe that the first step in reassessing the geopolitics of knowledge should be to deexceptionalize the COVID-19 crisis by recognizing the Global South's long history of resistance to natural and human-made disasters (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2020). It is virtually impossible to achieve horizontality in research collaborations that straddle the center-periphery divide and bridge activism, practice and scholarship without displacing the North as the center of power and knowledge. As long as knowledge and expertise are located in the North and experience and data are positioned in the South (Madlingozi, 2010: 226; see also Menzel, 2021), peace and conflict studies risks reinforcing the knowledge/power relations critiqued by post/decolonial scholars. Even the well-meaning coping strategies and long-term personal and professional relationships that mitigated the worst effects of the North-South asymmetry in the first phase of the pandemic may unwittingly have contributed to this by depoliticizing the crisis. Until we see thoroughgoing actions aligned with the commitment to decolonization, we will remain skeptical about whether COVID-19 will be a positive inflection point for qualitative research and the field of peace and conflict studies.

It is still too early to fully grasp the pandemic's long-term effects (Han et al., 2021) on the geopolitics of knowledge. Nevertheless, tracing the way Beyond Words, the Hub, and Truth Commissions and Sexual Violence adapted to it offers a preliminary impression of its dramatic effects on the Global South activist-practitioners. All three collaborations suffered from the unequal North-South access to resources that plagues mainstream research in peace and conflict studies. We argued that the pandemic renewed existing ethical questions and raised additional concerns for collaborations involving activist-practitioners situated (even temporarily) in the Global South. Moreover, it tested our commitment and capacity to work toward the decolonization of knowledge in the field. The first phase of the pandemic—when travel restrictions forced North-based collaborators out of “the field”—exposed South-based partners to a double burden. Inequalities in access to health care, communication technology, and decision spaces put them at a greater disadvantage, even as Global North colleagues became more reliant on their work. Security concerns (Datta, 2019; Jones et al., 2021), including growing risks of digital surveillance, were added to the list of risks during this phase.

For some Global North peace and conflict scholars, initial fears and frustrations about delays and new research strategies gave way to concerns that qualitative and fieldwork-based research would be (further) devalued in the second phase of the pandemic (Allam et al., 2020: 7). Others hailed the resulting slowdown as a generally positive opportunity for more thoughtfully supported interventions in the field (see Krause et al., 2021). Indeed, taking strategic advantage of project members’ complex identities and professional entanglements went some way in adjusting both research and impact strategies during the first phase. Now, as the pandemic's effects linger and become entrenched in the Global South (echoing previous crises, Rutazibwa, 2020), we must fundamentally (re)consider our research practices and processes.

Our valuation is that Global South contributions will continue to suffer and go by without due acknowledgement if research questions, methodologies, and outputs (1) remain tailored to Northern audiences, (2) support the careers of North-based academics, and (3) are predominantly funded by Global North entities. Therefore, we end with several recommendations directed at Global North scholars involved in research collaborations with South-based activist-practitioners (see also Álvarez Rivadulla and Luna, 2019; Datta and Sigdel, 2016).

Respond to the needs and interests of local participants and collaborators in grant applications (Krystalli et al., 2021) in addition to those of the funding bodies. Resist the notion that theory is firmly situated in the North and data (or experience) come from the South.

Consider the shifting political and security dynamics throughout the collaboration beyond simple concerns for collaborators’ well-being. Doing this acknowledges that this field produces and disseminates knowledge about conflict-related harms, and there is rarely a clear line between conflict and post-conflict.

Offer spaces for South-based partners in decision-making and professional development opportunities created by collaborations. Create avenues for personal and professional growth through mentoring and training as well as spaces for activist-practitioners to inform the course of the research at different stages, including outputs relevant for them or their organizations. Consider carer responsibilities and competing professional obligations to ensure South-based partners can realistically seize such opportunities.

Communicate results and recommendations locally and globally. “Giving back” does not only entail vernacularizing for Global South use; since impact is a nonlinear process, both the Global North and Global South audiences should be considered in dissemination work. This additional work (and its costs) should be planned from the start, and the workload must be distributed equitably.

Collaborators come in all shapes and sizes. Assumptions about capacity tempt us to turn to established organizations and well-known activist-practitioners. However, acting on our commitments to the decolonization of knowledge should drive us to reach beyond such circles.

Transparency is key, especially if the collaboration is new. While established collaborations may have been calibrated through prior exchanges, new collaborations should offer multiple opportunities to clarify limitations, expectations, and norms. Realism and honesty should guide these exchanges.