COVID-19 Induced Ethnographic Distance: Remote Fieldwork,Ethical Challenges and Knowledge Production in Conflict-Affected Environments

Abstract

Post-conflict ethnographic research thrives on bodily immersion in a field site to interact and observe how conflict-affected people navigate and make sense of their world. Therefore, ethnography and distance or ethnographic distance is an oxymoron. Physical immersion in the field has the advantage of generating situated knowledge as the researcher comes to know his situation/location in the field in relation to the social location, conditions, and identities of the researched and all those involved in the knowledge production. Hence, physical presence is desirable for the study of conflict-affected populations. However, when being in the field is dangerous or impossible, the researcher can adapt without losing the key insights that physical immersion provides. COVID-19 research travel restrictions made it impossible for me to travel to Uganda, a post-conflict setting, to conduct fieldwork for my doctoral studies. I had to re-scope my original research design to conduct remote fieldwork. This raised additional ethical challenges associated with fieldwork in such settings. This article reflects on my experience collaborating with two local research assistants (RAs) to conduct remote fieldwork in Northern Uganda. First, my overall ethical responsibility was based on a commitment not to transfer all the risks to the RAs. I formulated my ethical decisions around payment, workload, and the wellbeing of the RAs. Second, remote fieldwork meant that the RAs were the brokers, interviewers, interpreters, transcribers, and translators. These expanded roles significantly impacted the knowledge production processes. To account for this, I asked the RAs to write reflexive statements to situate themselves in the research. I discussed their reflexive statements around their roles as brokers, interviewers and language translators/interpreters and how each impacted knowledge production. The analysis shows that COVID-19 accelerated the localisation of peacebuilding research and provided an opportunity to re-think issues of power relations, local capacity, and gatekeeping.

Introduction

Physical presence in the field constitutes the kernel of research in conflict-affected environments that employ interviews and participant observation. Being in the field has benefits that are often missed in other methods. First, for researchers who conduct fieldwork in unfamiliar post-conflict environments, an advantage of physical presence in the field is that initial contacts with gatekeepers can snowball into identifying ‘hidden’, ‘marginalised’ and ‘hard to reach’ potential participants (Cohen & Arieli, 2011, p. 423). Second, being in the field provides the researcher with better insights from which to interpret local experiences of conflict and peacebuilding (Millar, 2018). Third, being in the field has the potential of chance or ‘accidental ethnography’ (Fujii, 2015). This means changing data or gaining deeper meaning into purposefully collected data through informal interactions and participating in mundane activities in fieldwork sites (Fujii, 2015; Krause, 2021; Marks, 2020). Thus, while in the field, unplanned activities or ‘accidental moments’ can become data (Fujii, 2015, p. 526). Fourth, physical presence helps in nurturing and building relationships, assessing the empirical situation on the ground and making ethical decisions to ameliorate risks associated with data collection in such environments (Wood, 2006).

In this regard, post-conflict scholars value physical immersion in the field because it helps to generate knowledge ‘on how people make meaning and exert agency [which] can hardly be replaced by more formal fieldwork methods by remote control’ (Krause, 2021, p. 330). Therefore, distance invariably affects the work of scholars who engage in research that employs interviews, participant observation and focus group discussions (Kaihko, 2020).

However, when personal immersion in the field is impossible or dangerous, the researcher can adapt without losing some of the insights gained by immersive approaches (Krause, 2021; Nguyen et al., 2022; Prommegger et al., 2021). COVID-19 and the associated travel bans made remote fieldwork the ‘new normal’ as travelling became impossible (Nguyen et al., 2022). This new normal replaced physical presence with virtual or remote presence, leading to an ethnographic distance. The ethnographic distance here refers to the impossibility of traditional fieldwork. Traditional fieldwork refers to the ‘study [of] people in their own time and space’ (Koonings et al., 2019, p. 4) ‘through personal interactions with research subjects’ (Wood, 2007, p. 123).

Like many PhD students around the world (e.g., Nguyen et al., 2022; Rutter et al., 2023) and international researchers (e.g., Krause et al., 2021; McKinnon et al., 2022; Watson & Lupton, 2022), this COVID-19 induced ethnographic distance necessitated the re-scoping of research methods. I was a PhD candidate at Monash University from September 2019 until June 2023, researching peacebuilding in Uganda. I received ethics approval from the Monash University Human Ethics Research Committee in August 2020. I expected to travel to Uganda by the end of November 2020 to begin fieldwork. As a high-risk study, I explained in my ethics application that I would mitigate some risks by remaining ethically reflexive (Cordner et al., 2012). I also provided contextual details in the explanatory statement on the risks and benefits associated with research participation in Uganda where post-conflict (in)securities intersect with authoritarianism (see Tapscott, 2017). These details aimed to underline the primacy of participants’ autonomy in obtaining informed consent (see e.g., Miller & Boulton, 2007; Visagie et al., 2019). I also explained how I would navigate the ethical dilemmas associated with research in conflict-affected environments.

First, with the understanding that adhering to ethical research principles in conflict-affected communities is uniquely challenged by (in)securities arising from trauma, mistrust, violence, fear, and aggravated vulnerabilities (Gordon, 2021), I was going to, among other things, rely on the snowballing technique to mitigate the risk of exclusion and further marginalisation of research participants (see Cohen & Arieli, 2011). Second, fieldwork in conflict-affected environments can disrupt and transform the existing local network of relationships long before the publication of findings (Brigden & Hallett, 2021). This disruption is caused by the researcher’s presence in the field and the research subject’s participation in the research. This requires the researcher to tactfully navigate ethical responsibilities/challenges associated with fieldwork in conflict-affected environments (e.g., Campbell, 2017; Shesterinina, 2019) and remain ethically responsible in publishing research findings (Knott, 2019; Parkinson & Wood, 2015). With this understanding, I explained in my ethics application that being in the field was essential in ethically embodying myself in an existing network of relationships to build trust and nurture relationships beyond the fieldwork.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions on international research travel disrupted my original plans. Disruption or ‘instances where an event is significant to cause deviation from the initial plan that the plan has to be changed substantially’ (Clausen et al., 2001, p. 2) is an essential part of conducting research in conflict-affected environments (Chamber, 2020). However, existing discussions of disruptions associated with research in conflict-affected environments are within traditional fieldwork. While in the field, researchers have proactively responded to disruptions by terminating fieldwork, changing interview schedules or avoiding/changing planned fieldwork locations to prevent harm to the researcher, research and RAs (Wood, 2006; Fujii, 2013; Jenkins, 2018; Mac Ginty et al., 2021). Thus, in traditional fieldwork in conflict-affected environments, the researcher, RAs, and the researched equally share risks. This made COVID-induced ethnographic distance or disruption unique for post-conflict research in at least three ways.

Collaborating with local RAs to conduct remote fieldwork heightened the tendency to transfer all the risks to these local facilitators. Specifically, PhD students with funding and income vulnerabilities (Paula, 2020) felt stressed and pressured (Atkinson et al., 2022; Pyhältö et al., 2023) to meet deadlines to avoid losing funding and paying exorbitant graduate tuition. This increased the tendency to transfer such pressures to local RAs in remote fieldwork. Similarly, existing vulnerabilities, including employment precarity in conflict-affected environments, meant local RAs could take more than the necessary risks to conduct fieldwork during COVID-19. Second, it intensified the ‘securitisation of research’ by universities and governments, especially in the Global North (Peter & Strazzari, 2017; Sukarieh & Tannock, 2019) in environments described as ‘unstable’ (Hoffman & Tarawalley, 2014); ‘zones of danger’ (Peter & Strazzari, 2017); ‘insecure’ (Baaz & Utas, 2019); and ‘conflict-affected’ (Gordon, 2021). Thus, the intersection of COVID-19 induced ethnographic distance and post-conflict insecurities created additional ethical challenges for conducting fieldwork. Lastly, COVID-19 ethnographic distance accelerated the localisation agenda in post-conflict research (Barakat & Milton, 2020; Clark & Alberti, 2021) and practice (International Alert, 2020; Interpeace, 2020; Peace Direct, 2020).

Within the context of the above, the remainder of this article reflects on my experiences working remotely with RAs in Uganda for my PhD fieldwork. As I discuss below, my absence in the field meant that the RAs had to take on additional responsibilities with attendant risks. These additional responsibilities instantiate the need to apply critical reflexivity and account for the positionalities and subjectivity of local RAs in knowledge production. This positionality of RAs has received peripheral attention in post-conflict research until recently (Moss & Hajj, 2020; Mwambari, 2019; Sukarieh & Tannock, 2019). The ongoing discussions on RA positionality and knowledge production have been in the context of traditional fieldwork. For example, Temple and Edwards (2002, p. 6) have noted that the interactions between research participants, researcher and interpreter overlap research data with ‘triple subjectivity’. This requires the researcher to work with interpreters to explore the social location of the interpreter through ‘rigorous reflectivity’ (Temple & Edwards, 2002, p. 6). In my case, the two RAs played essential roles in participant selection, arranging interviews, selecting interview locations, interviewing participants as well as transcribing and translating interviews. Each of these activities impacts knowledge production (see Temple & Edwards, 2002; Temple & Young, 2004) and underscores the need for critical reflexivity and consideration of the positionality of RAs in the research process (Anwar & Viqar, 2017; Nguyen et al., 2022).

The increased role of RAs in remote fieldwork meant that my ‘… agency paradoxically depended to a significant degree on the suspension of that very agency to the agency of the RAs …’ (Holmberg, 2014, p. 31). In many respects, the RAs assumed a double identity and positionality—their own identity and mine (see below). This reverses the dominant knowledge production practices in post-conflict research where RAs are ‘the concealed figures’ (Jenkins, 2018), ‘silenced’ (Turner, 2010), or occupying ‘the methodological backstage’ (Baaz & Utas, 2019). In my research, I was the concealed figure in the field whose agency was assumed/subsumed by the RAs. To account for knowledge production and how the RAs impacted the research process, I asked them to write reflexive statements to account for how their positionalities and identities affected the process. I will discuss their reflexive statements around three themes: brokering access, conducting interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs), and translating and transcribing recorded transcripts.

The remainder of the article proceeds as follows. I reflect on my positionality in the next section to provide the context for the research relationships that emerged. The section that follows examines ethical dilemmas that RAs confront in conflict-affected environments. The section highlights decisions made as part of my ethical responsibilities during COVID-19 to avoid transferring all the risks to them. I discuss my ethical responsibility around three issues: payment, workload, and the general wellbeing of the RAs. The penultimate section examines the RAs’ positionality in the research process. I conclude with a discussion of how COVID-19 accelerated the localisation of post-conflict research practice and the implications for the local turn in peacebuilding.

My Positionality

My relationship with the RAs and my fieldwork site was virtual/remote. Until now, the literature on the relationship between the researcher-RAs has focused on the physical/personal relationship in the field and how it evolves (e.g., Middleton & Pradhan, 2014; Anwar & Viqar, 2017). The usual practice for hiring RAs for fieldwork has been in person, or at least it is the recommended practice (Fujii, 2013). The researcher usually travels to the field and, through personal advertisement, local collaborators, gatekeepers or researchers who have done similar work in the location, meet and hire RAs (see Fujii, 2013). I hired my RAs remotely through a researcher who had done work in Uganda. One of the critical issues in the researcher-RAs’ relationship is that there is a power imbalance between them. The consensus is that the power imbalance tilts in favour of the researcher for many reasons.

First, the researcher plans the study and research design, usually with no involvement of the RAs (see Maclean, 2013). The researcher’s apriori assumptions usually inscribe this activity, shaping the research questions and how data is collected and interpreted. Second, the researcher usually arrives in the field with a planned budget with less flexibility for negotiation. This can turn the researcher-RA relationship exploitative or transactional (see Sukarieh & Tannock, 2019; Mwambari, 2019). Third, racial and gender identities are some of the factors that can affect this power relationship (Kobayashi, 1994; Yacob-Haliso, 2019).

It is noteworthy that my doctoral research is situated within critical peace theory, specifically the local turn in peacebuilding (Mac Ginty & Richmond, 2013). I have critically examined Uganda’s local and indigenous peacebuilding mechanisms since the end of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU) civil war in 2008. Hence, my epistemological approach is to be attentive to all forms of power, including research into power relationships. This frames my forthgoing positionality.

I am black, African, from Ghana in West Africa, and based at an Australian university. My research location is Uganda in Eastern Africa. This makes me and my research about the Global South. As a Global Southerner, I am drawn to the discourses of Global South epistemologies illuminated through the concept of (de)coloniality concerning Global South knowledge production (Maldonado-Torres, 2011; Smith, 2012), particularly in Africa (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015, 2015b). According to Maldonado-Torres (2011, p. 117), decoloniality means ‘dismantling relations of power and conceptions of knowledge that foment the reproduction of racial, gender, and the geopolitical hierarchies that came into being or found new and more power forms of expression in the modern/colonial world’. Thus, coloniality is about practices and structures of domination, while decoloniality is about dismantling or at least being attentive to and manoeuvring them in knowledge production. If decoloniality as advanced in Global South epistemologies is about dismantling coloniality in knowledge production, then dichotomising it into Global North-South could be simplistic. Some local knowledge practices in Africa, including the falsification of data (Biruk, 2018) and gatekeeping (Branch, 2018) can be colonial. In Uganda, research brokers are leveraging their links to gate-keep knowledge production (see Owor, 2022). Such local knowledge production practices equally lead to local colonisation of knowledge production. This means that gatekeepers could skew peacebuilding knowledge if they continue to broker access to a select few. Therefore, in the quest to dismantle the dominating structures between the Global North and South, we must not lose sight of the epistemic violence present within the Global South. Hence, I draw on a critical reflexive lens in positioning myself.

Additionally, I have not experienced conflict as a Ghanaian, unlike my Ugandan RAs and participants. This creates insider-outsider dynamics in my Global Southernness, which has implications for our worldviews and experiences. To complicate this further, I am based in an Australian university and trained in Western methodologies and ways of knowing. Even with my studies in Ghana, my research methods training made no distinction between Global North/Western and Global South methodologies. Therefore, I cannot deny the influence of ‘Western thought’. This complex identity creates a distance in worldviews between me, RAs, and research participants. However, this complex identity gives me a vantage position to approach de-coloniality in knowledge production. The two RAs were Acholi Ugandans with a lifelong experience living and working in Gulu in Northern Uganda. These identity markers, combined with the effects of COVID-19, made me aware of my positionality and affected how I engaged with my RAs. First, it happened that the two RAs are Christians and happen to attend a branch of a church whose founder is a Ghanaian. This was an icebreaker on the first day of our Zoom conversation. This conversation went on for a while and led me to understand the importance of religion in the lives of the Acholi people. It also made me understand why religious leaders have played and keep playing a key role in peacebuilding in Uganda. This understanding helped me to situate the centrality of forgiveness as a central part of the Acholi cosmology that underlies the indigenous practices of peacebuilding.

Second, as the relationship with the RAs evolved, I came to realise that I was not the most powerful in the researcher-RA relationship, contrary to the existing body of work on this matter. For most of the process, the balance tilted towards the RAs. Although I had the spending power, the RAs had the power over budgeting. After our first chat, they sent me the budgetary items, including transportation costs, daily compensation and logistics. These items appeared non-negotiable. In addition, my ethical stance of not making the relationship exploitative also drove me to accept their proposed budget without negotiation. Third, the decision of who is to be interviewed and where the interview is to be held was determined by the RAs. Additionally, my ethical responsibility of doing no harm to the RAs circumscribed my ability to enforce strict adherence to deadlines. There were many instances where the RAs did not meet their self-imposed deadlines. When this happened, it affected my entire PhD deadlines. I felt vulnerable. For instance, one of the RAs agreed to travel to the local archival repository to get materials that can only be accessed in person. However, the materials were only sent after a few reminders; by then I had completed data analysis and drafting was far advanced.

Lastly, evidence from traditional fieldwork suggests that the researcher’s physical presence and identity, including gender, can both open and close off access or the amount of information the research participant wants to share. How my physical absence in the field affected the fieldwork is not apparent. However, I can conjecture some possibilities. At the beginning of each interview or focus group discussion, the RAs told the participants about the interview and introduced the project as a component of a PhD degree. The RAs would introduce who I am, where I am studying, and where I am originally from. I suggest that by introducing myself to the participants, I become embodied in the conversation in that the introduction constituted part of the informed consent process. It created a virtual relationship between the participants and me. Another dimension of my absence can be seen as power-levelling, where being interviewed by one of their own (insider) creates a safe space in which to share freely and talk openly without ‘an obvious outsider’ (Maclean, 2013, p. 78).

Local Research Assistants and Post-conflict Research: Ethical Dilemmas and Responsibilities

Working with local RAs is a widespread practice in qualitative research (e.g., Baaz & Utas, 2019; Bøås, 2021; Fujii, 2013; Jenkins, 2018; Mwambari, 2019). In the post-conflict methods literature, different concepts have been used to describe the range of local actors who regulate access between the researcher and the researched. Among the commonly used concepts are ‘interpreters and translators’ (Fujii, 2013; Tschunkert, 2021); ‘collaborators and friends’ (Hoffman & Tarawalley, 2014; Jenkins, 2018); ‘guides’ (Jenkins, 2018); ‘brokers’ (Baaz & Utas, 2019; Utas, 2019); ‘fixers and friends’ (Bøås, 2021); and gatekeepers (Sindre, 2021). While these have different conceptual connotations and may perform distinct roles in fieldwork, the common denominator is that they facilitate the relationships between the researcher and the researched. Therefore, I use RAs to highlight the role of the two local assistants who have been directly involved in conducting the fieldwork components of my doctoral research, including brokering access, collecting, translating, and transcribing interview data. RA is used as an umbrella concept to include other synonymous concepts. However, where needed, interchangeable concepts are used to highlight specific roles or for analytical clarity.

The idea of risk—conceived as potential physical, emotional or psychological harm that research participants and others involved in research are likely to suffer due to their lived experiences—drives the discourse and practice of research in conflict-affected environments. Researching conflict-affected environments—places that have experienced long periods of armed conflict—comes with significant risks (Gordon, 2021). Such places have heightened (in)security issues, and life itself can be politicised. This is particularly the case for places where identity has been the driving force in the conflict. Identity-based conflicts create exacerbated mistrust, fear and suspicion due to such conflicts’ exclusionary and zero-sum nature (King & Samii, 2018; Rohner et al., 2013). In such contexts, innocent association with or talking to members of the opposite group can have dire consequences for both the researcher, RAs and the researched.

Therefore, as Gordon (2021, p. 1) contends, ‘gathering and interpreting data in such environments become a very sensitive and potentially harmful practice and a highly political one’. This requires that ‘researchers work through the complications of fieldwork in such environments looking for less harmful possibilities for making sense of people’s lives’ (de Laine, 2000, p. 1). This makes ethical dilemmas inherent to fieldwork. However, when confronted with ethical dilemmas, no course of action seems satisfactory ‘because there is no “right” decision’ (de Laine, 2000, p. 3). Rather, an ethical decision is ‘only a decision that is thoughtfully made and perhaps “more right” than alternatives’ (cited in de Laine, 2000, p. 3).

RAs in conflict-affected environments, like everyone else, are confronted with the everyday challenges associated with such contexts. However, they open their private and public spheres to further insecurities by participating in fieldwork (see Baaz & Utas, 2019; Brigden & Hallett, 2021; Mwambari, 2019). Indeed, their indigeneity or localness to a particular research location makes RAs alert to (in)security risks and they are thus better able to manoeuvre them (Kovats-Barnart, 2002; Hoffman & Tarawalley, 2014). However, it has also meant that the means to ensure their security and safety are not written into ethics applications. Where security and protection are mentioned, it is often related to the researcher and the researched. Meanwhile, RAs are subject to the most risks and tend to suffer more long-term threats of violence and intimidation when the research is over and the researcher has left (Baaz & Utas, 2019; also Mwambari, 2019). Beyond the threat of physical harm, RA participation can disrupt social relations while burdening their care responsibilities (see Brigden & Hallett, 2021; Jenkins, 2018; Mwambari, 2019).

Relatedly, RAs in traditional fieldwork are usually silenced in research reports despite their footprint on qualitative data and knowledge production (Baaz & Utas, 2019; Bøås, 2021; Schiltz & Büscher, 2016). As Baaz and Utas (2019, pp. 157–158) observed, RAs do not only facilitate access, ‘they often become the eyes and ears of researchers, thus exercising a large influence on the latter’s grid of intelligibility, shaping not only how they make sense of certain phenomena, but also what they see in the first place’ (also Moss & Hajj, 2020). The silence around how RAs shape knowledge production is thus problematic (Baaz & Utas, 2019; Turner, 2010). In one way, it perpetuates the transactional and sometimes exploitative relationship between the researcher and RAs (Sukarieh & Tannock, 2019). It also affects how the ethical dilemmas associated with knowledge production are accounted for. Meanwhile, RA positionality in conflict-affected environments, especially in deeply divided post-conflict societies, can either be enabling or restricting, directly impacting participation and/or responses from participants (see Jenkins, 2018). Remote fieldwork during COVID-19, more than ever, has intensified the need to be open about the influence of RAs in knowledge production.

Additionally, and as mentioned earlier, the risks associated with doing research in a conflict-affected environment are shared between the RAs and the researcher when the researcher is physically present to guide the process (see Hoffman & Tarawalley, 2014). However, COVID-19 ethnographic distance meant that RAs assumed all the risks associated with data collection, including the risk of contracting the coronavirus. Apart from health risks, contextual sensitivity in Uganda was particularly critical given the intersection between post-conflict insecurities and authoritarianism. Some researchers have reported that the Ugandan government uses pervasive surveillance measures to access and control information (Tapscott, 2017, 2023). Everyday life in Northern Uganda, like many post-conflicts, is rife with public and private violence (Meinert & Whyte, 2017; Tapscott, 2023). In this situation, my first ethical responsibility was to ensure the wellbeing and safety of the RAs. My ethical responsibility to not transfer all the risks to the RAs was based on the ethics of care (Branicki, 2020; Isike, 2017; Vaittinen et al., 2019). This was done around three issues: payment for the RAs, management of workload, and general wellbeing when fieldwork was underway. I will discuss these in turn.

Payment as an Ethical Responsibility

A burgeoning literature in post-conflict research has documented a history of exploitative relationships between researchers and their RAs (e.g., Baaz & Utas, 2019; Sukarieh & Tannock, 2019). With the intensification of the consequences of COVID-19 for precarious employment (see Matilla-Santander et al., 2021), I was attuned to the possibility of exploitation. COVID-19-exacerbated job precarity could influence citizens of post-conflict countries to accept fieldwork jobs without fully considering the attendant risks. Again, it could worsen an exploitative relationship either by accepting lower compensation or more tasks due to a lack of alternative options (see Sukarieh & Tannock, 2019). The practices around payment have been that researchers from the Global North arrive in the field with predetermined rates and little to no negotiation space (see Mwambari, 2019). This practice leads to hierarchical relationships where outsider researchers expect RAs to ‘work for them’ instead of ‘work with them’ (Mwambari, 2019).

Cognisant that the researcher-RA relationship is more than transactional, I held discussions with the RAs to establish a mutual relationship of rewards and risks to minimise exploitation (Mwambari, 2019). Even though, as a PhD student, I was operating within a limited budget, I took steps to ensure that my relationship with the RAs was not exploitative. Upon our initial discussions on their roles, I asked the RAs to determine their compensation. I agreed to pay them without negotiation. The RAs have experience working for several international organisations and academics in similar roles, and they were better placed to determine what they thought was fair compensation for their work. They quoted their compensation in United States dollars even though they received it in Uganda shillings. I made them decide on the Uganda shilling-US dollar exchange rate. We noted the prevailing US$-UGX exchange whenever payment was not immediately made. However, on the payment date, if the UGX had appreciated against the US dollar, I paid them at the prevailing rate to not disadvantage them.

Workload and Ethical Responsibilities

Evidence from the literature suggests that RAs are sometimes overworked, underpaid or not paid for unplanned work (Middleton & Cons, 2014; Sukarieh & Tannock, 2019; Mwambari, 2019). In Northern Uganda, RAs who interviewed with Mwambari (2019) shared fieldwork experiences where they had to work long unpaid hours because researchers had inflexible timelines. Similarly, participants in Sukarieh and Tannock (2019) recounted the experience of working extended hours, including on weekends without payment.

The issue of overworking and unpaid research-related work emanates from inflexible budgets and timelines, issues that PhD students confront. However, the researcher owes the RA an ethical responsibility to not overburden them in ways that compromise their security. Cognisant of this, I adopted a flexible approach to the fieldwork. Given the timelines for my PhD, I asked the RAs to create their work schedule. During the first phase of the fieldwork, they proposed and we agreed on two interviews a day. Where an interviewer cancelled an appointment, the RAs rescheduled at their convenience. Indeed, the flexible nature of the fieldwork disrupted my revised PhD timelines. However, the decisions were ethically driven and I was convinced they were the best alternatives.

COVID Risks and Wellbeing of RAs

During COVID-19, qualitative researchers employed several media, including the use of Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and video conferencing to engage with local participants. However, I opted to collaborate with RAs to conduct personal interviews for several reasons. I was mindful to avoid the marginalisation of those with limited access to Internet connectivity. It was also an opportunity to realise the much talked about but less practised need to localise research participation—giving RAs the agency to significantly influence the research process. This was imperative for my overarching research goal to understand local and indigenous peacebuilding mechanisms in Uganda. Local RAs making important decisions on research participation was an act of local agency in post-conflict research.

To avoid the immediate risk of the RAs contracting the coronavirus, I always emphasised that they adhered to the in-country COVID-19 rules around social distancing (Republic of Uganda, 2020). In this regard, the fieldwork was done in two phases. The first phase occurred when the first wave of COVID-19 was ending, but lockdown was still in place, with exceptions. Given this situation, the first phase targeted local elites and leaders of local NGOs. The understanding was that most of these participants had access to office spaces that adhered to the 1.5-m rule while also ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of interviews. Most of the elite-level interviews occurred in a location chosen by the respondents, usually in their private offices. The second phase of the interviews, targeting ordinary people at the community level, occurred when COVID-19 restrictions had eased and movement was less restricted. However, I emphasised to the RAs to always err on the side of caution so as not to endanger themselves and the participants. For example, during the fieldwork, there was a second outbreak of COVID-19 in Uganda and we immediately suspended interviews until restrictions were lifted. The female RA fell ill while fieldwork was underway and we suspended fieldwork. During her illness, I would occasionally text her on WhatsApp to check on her, and I made sure that the research issues were not part of the conversations. Whenever it came up, I insisted that her health was more important and that she should focus on getting well first. I was adhering to the ethics of care and not transferring risk in the bid to meet my PhD deadlines.

Epistemological Reflexivity and Knowledge Production

Epistemological reflexivity encourages the researcher to be aware and attentive to possible inherent biases in knowledge production (Ackerly & True, 2010). Being epistemologically reflexive means constantly reflecting on one’s experiences and standpoints and how they shape knowledge production. This is important in deciding on what/whose voices count, what/whom to include, and what/whom to exclude in the research in a way that does not (re)silence voices and/or perpetuate harmful narratives. This means many things in conflict-affected environments, including pre-fieldwork preparations, relationships with RAs, gatekeepers, choosing interview sites, participants’ selection, and so on (see Gordon, 2021). Dealing astutely with these decisions is important because they affect how the researcher comes to ‘know’ the research field. I came to ‘see’ and ‘know’ the field and data collected through the positionality of RAs. A total of 40 interviews and 3 FGDs (with at least 12 participants each) were conducted between October 2020 and September 2022. I conducted only 2 of the 40 interviews on Zoom. Thus, through brokering access, interviewing, translating and transcribing, the RAs made meaningful inputs into the aims and goals of the overall PhD project beyond just implementing a pre-designed research.

RAs Brokering Access and Knowledge Production

Baaz and Utas (2019, p. 160) define a research broker ‘as a key agent being in-between the researcher and the researched who regulates the access and flow of knowledge between them’. By their nature and activities, brokers open the doors to the field and determine the parameters of who is talked to (Sindre, 2021). Interchangeable concepts like gatekeepers become even more instructive. According to Moss and Hajj (2020, p. 29), ‘local RAs are gatekeepers of local know-how’ in conflict-affected environments because they have the relevant social and professional networks that are relevant for fieldwork. Drawing on their social and professional networks, RAs may direct outsider researchers to certain participants because they have enjoyed working with them in the past and it is therefore easier to work with such participants again. It is also possible that local RAs share similar political views with certain participants, as it has become common knowledge in social science research that RAs are not neutral (Moss & Hajj, 2020). In remote fieldwork, where RAs have a more prominent role in determining the contours of research participation, their social networks, professional relationships, and political views shape knowledge production more than ever.

Upon our initial contact, one of the RAs sent me an already-made list of participants, mainly local elites. It is worth pointing out that I had tried to broker access with many of the names on the said list and failed. The male RA subsequently interviewed most of these participants. Several explanations are possible. The RA, who runs a local research consortium, has a social or professional relationship with these local elites, which makes it easier for him to broker access, interview them and elicit responses. Another explanation is that because of the RA’s work, he has interacted with these participants for similar projects in the past. Most of these local elites have worked directly in peacebuilding; some have played key roles in the initiation of the Juba Peace Talks by establishing contact with Kony, the leader of the LRA. This makes them credible sources of knowledge/information. However, continuously brokering access to these participants for international researchers in Uganda could mean that what comes to represent peace and conflict knowledge in Uganda could disproportionately mirror the experiences of these local elites. Thus, the professional and social networks of local RAs became critical to research participation and knowledge production during COVID-19.

Reflecting on her positionality, the female RA emphasised her experience and pleasant personality. According to her, the decision on who to interview was based on a ‘random selection of persons we felt were knowledgeable in the subject matter and would offer the desired information … a few of them I knew personally … having worked in Northern Uganda for over ten years, and have met in various forums’. ¹ Reflecting further on the role of her personal relationships and gender identity in brokering access, she writes:

My identity as a female Acholi lady could have contributed to the study’s success. However, it is my knowledge and ability to articulate the issues being researched and my pleasant personality. While in the field, you meet people with varied personalities and your ability to communicate effectively and interpersonal skills play a significant role. I believe a skilled, qualified male will also get the desired information if he knows how to work with the community and possesses research skills. ²

RAs, Interviewing and Knowledge Production

The interviewer in qualitative research wields power and influences knowledge production. Felman & Laub (1992, p. 7) argues that to know an event, there has to be a narrator and a listener. The listener bears witness to the narrator giving cognition to the narrative being listened to. It is through this process that ‘the event is given birth to’ (Felman & Laub, 1992, p. 57). Therefore, the listener of an event ‘is a party to the creation of knowledge de novo … [and] the blank screen on which the event comes to be inscribed for the first time’. In this regard, an interviewer who listens to and hears the stories of research participants provides the medium through which we come to know. In the context of remote fieldwork where the RAs conducted interviews, they wielded the power of the interviewer, making their positionality critical to knowledge production (to the best of my knowledge, the only exception is Nguyen et al., 2022—this work was, however, not in a post-conflict context).

The RAs in my fieldwork played the role of and wielded the power of the interviewer. Each of the RAs has at least ten years of experience working in similar roles. They drew on their skill set, cultural intelligence, and social cues to drive the conversation. For example, in his reflexive statement, the male RA emphasised that his deep indigenous knowledge facilitated interviews: According to him:

I was able to use arts-based methods, including storytelling (odoo doo), songs (wer) and proverbs (carol ok pa Acholi) and knowledge of drama (goga) to inform the research. ³

Thus, while I had designed semi-structured interviews to guide the data collection, the RAs drew on their local knowledge to localise the data collection approach. Turner (2010, p. 214) has noted that ‘RAs themselves are often better placed to identify the most appropriate way to conduct an interview’. As I discuss in the conclusion, this localisation of research provides insights into local agency peacebuilding.

Translation/Interpretation and Knowledge Production

Language interpreters (Temple, 2002; Temple & Edwards, 2002) and/or translators (Temple & Young, 2004; Tschunkert, 2021) affect the meaning of qualitative data. Translators and interpreters can be ‘cultural brokers’ (Turner, 2010, p. 213) by acting appropriately to mediate unspoken aspects of a particular culture that may not be obvious to the external researcher. This can take the form of avoiding asking questions that may be culturally inappropriate or rephrasing responses. During interpretation, Skjelsbæk (2016) notes that the scholarship suggests that RAs engaged in cross-language research are expected to accomplish their roles while remaining invisible. However, interpreters do more than find equivalent words, especially in research settings marked by extreme trauma; they find appropriate words to communicate research interview questions to minimise harm (Skjelsbæk, 2016). This is true for transcribing and translating interview records in cross-cultural research as well (Skjelsbæk, 2016, 2020). At every level of this process, the RA affects knowledge production.

In my remote field, the RAs played the roles of interpreters, transcribers and translators. While most of the interviews were conducted in English, a few were in Luo, the local language spoken among the Acholi of Northern Uganda. During translation, the female RA, for instance, provided in-text comments and background information for the Luo-English transcripts to clarify what respondents truly meant. She left some Luo phrases that were difficult to translate and provided proximate explanations in English. Thus, the RA was not engaged in the straightforward act of finding equivalent words in English for the Luo transcripts but more so provided a means for me to understand and analyse the data. This meant that the final translated interview transcripts in English were imbued with the RA’s subjectivity.

In addition, my absence in the field meant that I missed fieldwork notes—a critical element for qualitative data analysis and writing (Pacheco-Vega, 2019; Phillippi & Lauderdale, 2018). I had to rely on the field notes kept by the RAs. The RAs kept detailed field notes, including detailed descriptions of the location of interviews and the emotional expressions of participants. These field notes became my eyes and sense of feeling for the data they collected. For example, in her field notes, the female RA described the location of an interview with a traditional Acholi leader and clan chief as follows:

I interviewed him from one of the halls where he meets his cabinet and executives. It was well decorated with the Acholi cultural royal regalia including leopard skins, pots, calabashes, baskets, winnowers, beads, several pictures of himself and the queen mother (traditionally referred to as Daker), during their coronation, weddings and other family functions. ⁴

Herzog (2005, p. 25) argues that the choice of interview location in terms of who chooses and what location is not a technical matter of convenience and comfort. It should be seen as part of ‘the interpretation of the findings [since] the interview location plays a role in constructing reality, serving simultaneously as both cultural product and producers’. The excerpt above, for instance, provided intelligibility into my understanding of the post-conflict Acholi where traditional leaders have promoted Acholi traditional peacebuilding practices, partly to reassert their legitimacy (Komujuni & Büscher, 2020). The choice of interview location, gleaned from the field notes, has both symbolic and political implications. It could mean the interviewee’s reassertions of power and positionality concerning the RA (see Elwood & Martin, 2000).

Conclusion: COVID-19 and Localisation of Peacebuilding Research and Practice

Ethical research in a conflict-affected environment requires that the researcher be ‘genuinely self-reflective’ (Gordon, 2021, p. 23) or ‘reflexively open’ (cited in Gordon, 2021, p. 23). This means ‘reflecting on one’s positionality, relationships of power with others, and the impact and value of research and, ultimately, who it is for’ (Gordon, 2021, p. 23). This article shows that adhering to and overcoming ethical dilemmas in the conflict-affected environment is daunting—a situation that was compounded by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of remote fieldwork. On the one hand, the COVID-19 induced ethnographic distance heightened the securitisation of research in conflict-affected environments leading to the possibility of transferring risk to local RAs. On the other hand, it has accelerated the opportunity to deepen our understanding of the local(isation) in peacebuilding.

In peacebuilding research, COVID-19 has heightened the normative justification for the ‘local turn’ scholarship, the central goal of my doctoral thesis. Despite its conceptual and practical ambiguity, the contention of the local turn scholarship is that contextual local knowledge is essential to finding sustainable solutions to local conflicts. This demands that the researcher leave room for local RAs to manoeuvre the complex fieldwork terrain by applying their skills, experience and knowledge to collect research data. My research design and data collection techniques are instructive. First, collecting data remotely demonstrates that when local RAs are given the space and are trusted to make fieldwork decisions, they not only feel empowered, but it also opens the space to understand and theorise local knowledge production. Second, RAs’ fieldwork decisions on who to include or exclude from the interview/data sample can provide insights into the manifestation of local power dynamics. It also provides insights into who constitutes the local or whose opinion matters in knowledge production. Therefore, when locals talk with locals, it provides a means to move beyond the local-international dichotomy that obfuscates the politics of local knowledge production itself. Two outcomes are possible.

On the one hand, priming RAs’ agency possesses emancipatory potential. This could occur when local RAs use their networks and connections to broker access to hidden and hard-to-reach locations and often marginalised populations. During the first phase of my fieldwork, some of the local elites we interviewed recommended we go to the rural areas to speak with the rural population because they may have different opinions and experiences. This indicates that local elites are attuned to the spatial dimensions of post-conflict (Uganda) contexts. Thus, holistic local knowledge must include elite/urban and non-elite/rural perspectives on post-conflict Uganda. On the other hand, the exercise of RAs’ inclusionary and exclusionary agency in the field could perpetuate local power structures. This could occur if RAs continue to include/interview the same people in fieldwork for reasons ranging from convenience to similarity in political opinions. Third, it also provides a means for reflexivity in analysing data in that RAs draw on their existing networks and social identities to broker access during fieldwork. This also indicates that fieldwork is relational as it involves the power of relationships and social connections within and among local populations. Asking RAs to account for their positionality prevents the misrepresentation of data.

COVID-19 catalysed the localisation agenda among the external intervention community with ‘humanitarian action, development and peacebuilding’ (Barakat & Milton, 2020, p. 148; Clark & Alberti, 2021). COVID-19 has shown that when international movement and assistance are immobilised or restricted, local populations in the conflict-affected environment continue to cope and live with war and its aftermath. Local and indigenous CSOs with already established connections with local populations continued to work in peacebuilding, where travel restrictions prevented international actors from going (Clark & Alberti, 2021). International peacebuilding organisations often rely on national and local NGOs to deliver peacebuilding activities. This demonstrates that local actors should not be merely implementers of externally designed peacebuilding programs but collaborators in designing intervention programs (Clark & Alberti, 2021). This development gives a peep into what localisation looks like or should look like (see de Coning, 2020a, b).

This catalytic localisation due to COVID-19 brings local capacity and resilience to the fore. During COVID-19, peacebuilding responses to the daily realities of local populations in conflict-affected countries became a function of existing local capacity and resilience. Clark and Alberti (2021) found that during COVID-19, local NGOs were more responsive to the emerging needs of their communities than their international counterparts. This vindicates the long-recognised but tardy action to empower local capacity and resilience within humanitarian action, development and peacebuilding. This also adds weight to the evidence that local humanitarian, peacebuilding and development actors are more effective on the ground because they possess locally appropriate cultural knowledge and can identify and talk to vulnerable and hidden populations (see Clark & Alberti, 2021; Manis, 2018).

On the one hand, such evidence suggests the need for a ‘more sustainable, long-term approach to nurturing local capacities’ (Barakat & Milton, 2020, p. 156). On the other hand, the effective collaboration between external interveners and local actors during COVID-19 demonstrates that the problem is not always a lack of local capacity but the willingness of external partners to trust local actors and be genuinely interested in local ownership and their agency. This necessitates what de Coning (2018, 2020) calls ‘adaptive peacebuilding’ or ‘adaptive peace operations’, where enough flexibility is built into peacebuilding activities for local actors to respond to emerging needs rather than the hitherto strict bureaucratic/technocratic approach. One way is for budget flexibility to allow for programmatic and operational adjustments (Clark & Alberti, 2021) for communities to cope with crises (de Coning, 2018).

This flexibility is equally true for post-conflict research design and implementation. Such flexibility will also open space to critically evaluate local priorities, local conceptions of peace and the kind of ownership they promote. As it is widely agreed upon, uncertainty is part of fieldwork in post-conflict settings. However, COVID-19 has shown that flexibility in research design, budgeting and when fieldwork is underway should constitute part of ethical responsibility. My fieldwork experience shows that flexibility is linked to the principle of ‘do no harm’. Being flexible with project and budgetary timeliness during the pandemic means not pushing RAs into harm’s way. This is sometimes not ideal since it could affect the duration of PhD research, such as in my case, but a delayed project is more ethically correct than pushing RAs to take more than the necessary risks.