‘Why are you here’: Rethinking Reflexivity in Conflict Research

Abstract

Research in conflict settings is evolving, especially regarding the institutionalization of ethics. Despite an emphasis on standardized ethical guidelines, the reality is that ethical considerations in conflict environments often leans on the researchers’ own intuition, rather than strict adherence to academic rules, acknowledging the dynamics of power and politics present in conflict research. This paper advocates for the need and value of continuous and multifaceted reflexivity to effectively navigate these dynamics. It argues against a uniform approach to ethical guidelines, suggesting instead that researchers need to flexibly adjust their methods according to varying contexts for deeper field engagements. This paper draws from the field experiences of two researchers who used political ethnographic methods in diverse conflict settings: one in the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA) and the other in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It delves into discussions on the perspectives of insiders versus outsiders, examining how differing levels of reflexivity, shaped by diverse experiential backgrounds and positions, influence knowledge production. By comparing our interactions in two varied conflict environments, we outline unique trajectories and demonstrate how the intricate, rich knowledge of insider researcher, alongside the objective, distanced observations of outsider researcher, provide complementary perspectives for both developing a critical reflection and engagement in conflict research. Questions about ethics, power imbalances, emotional management, and how to immerse within the field emerged during our fieldworks, and our findings illustrate that constructivist customized context-specific reflexivity enhances security, ethics, as well as research quality. The integration of these reflexive approaches promotes innovative solutions, benefiting practical applications in conflict studies.

Introduction

The arrival of a researcher into a field often alerts the local community, raising multiple questions about their presence. The initial question is typically: ‘Why are you here?’. In regions experiencing violence, where individuals or groups may be in conflict or even engaged in armed warfare, the sudden appearance of a researcher can be perceived as a threat, both to themselves and to the locals. In situations where hostility exists between two factions, the researcher’s role might be viewed with suspicion. Questions that might arise include: is the researcher gathering information from us to provide to the state or the West? Is the researcher a state spy, a foreign spy, or even a terrorist in disguise? (Dawar, 2021). In conflict sites we encounter a range of actors from non-state actors in active conflict against the state, others who are loyal to the state, to others who harbor grievances against the state and its administration. Daily, there are resistances and reconfigurations, with local actors engaged in a ‘game’ using diverse strategies to pursue their social, political, and economic interests (Shah, 2018). With a wide range of interests at stake, clear power struggles among actors take place frequently. The question then arises: can the presence of a researcher disrupt pre-existing micro-settlements? In the context of a wide range of violent encounters and the presence of powerful actors in the research site, it is natural to question why the local community should share information with the researcher. Questions such as why the information is sought, where it will be used, and who will ultimately benefit from it, relate to the impact of the researcher’s presence and actions on the local community.

The question of ‘why are you here’ is one that researchers also need to ask themselves. Do we, as researchers, feel the issues the same way locals do? How often do we examine our own motives, beliefs, and perceptions regarding our field sites, assessing differences from the local culture, society, and belief systems, and subsequently making strategies to adapt? Reflecting on our own presence, and assessing whether our pre-field beliefs and perceptions cause harm or benefit is a crucial part of reflexivity ¹ in research. The frequency with which researchers engage in such reflections, and how reflexivity becomes beneficial in conflict settings, are central discussions of this paper.

Intuition and Rules: Navigating Reflexivity and Ethical Decision-Making in Conflict Research Dynamics

Such questions arise from the field in ways that researchers often cannot anticipate. This is because, in most cases, concerned ethics committees do not fully address concerns about decisions that often need to be made on the spot and on the ground (Bush & Duggan, 2013; Ford et al., 2009; Millora et al., 2020; Sultana, 2007). Standard methodologies provide useful procedures and guidelines, and existing academic contributions have foregrounded important debates around positionality, field access, and researcher vulnerability (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007; Rose, 1997; Vogel & Musamba, 2022). More so, a significant body of work, particularly in feminist, postcolonial, and conflict research traditions (see for example Abdelnour & Abu Moghli, 2021; Cheng & Day, 2024; England, 1994; Enloe, 2014; Enria, 2016; Fitzgerald, 2020; Glas, 2021; Solie, 2024; Thaler, 2021; Thapar-Björkert & Henry 2004; Wood, 2006) have made important contributions in positioning reflexivity as a tool for grappling with power, everyday local politics, ethical tensions, and the politics of knowledge in conflict research, and in highlighting the complexities that can catch a researcher off guard. In a way, these contributions underscore the need for methodologies to acknowledge and address the unique challenges of conducting research in conflict zones. However, in many empirical studies, reflexivity is still often underutilized or reduced to descriptive ethical or positionality statements. Our contribution builds on these contributions by highlighting how constructivist reflexivity can be methodologically operationalized across contrasting field settings through a comparative and dialogic process.

At one level, conflict environments necessitate adaptive strategies based on intuition, experience, and contextual judgment (Wood, 2006). As such, negotiating power dynamics in conflict zones relies significantly on context, the nature of the conflict, and the researcher’s positionality in the field. This does not imply that researchers entering conflict settings should set out to conduct their work unethically. However, this paper contends that conflict settings present distinct challenges, and our aim is to highlight how researchers navigate these ethical dilemmas to then emphasize the role of reflexivity in managing security risks and knowledge production. In particular we focus on intuition which immediately poses challenges for other attributes used to indicate high-quality research quality and rigour such as transparency, reproducibility and accountability. Our focus on intuition stems primarily from two observations. First, we recognize and want to respect research field sites as locations or experiences of entanglement and engagement. In other words, both researchers, working in different geographical and conflict contexts, came to value the intersubjective and emotional dimensions of our respective research, dimensions that are not given enough space in academic writings and discussions. In many ways, our entanglements reflected a shift in our thinking away from being researchers ON conflict or ON people caught up in conflict, to researchers WITH people caught up in or with a stake in conflict. The move from ‘on’ to ‘with’ is anchored in an acknowledgement that our research was deeply intersubjective and emotional. Second, intuition is an important human cognitive faculty used quite often in times of crises or pressure or in contexts where there is a lack of knowledge. Intuition is a skill that can be learned, nurtured and strengthened. In our respective research, we both used intuition to inform our decision-making and this complemented rather than cancelled out other drivers of decision-making such as experience and rationality. Again, for both researchers, decision-making in our research was made more robust because of the use of intuition. Recognizing the role of intuition made our research practice more transparent and more accountable. To those who might ask if intuition creates a research bias or makes research ‘too subjective’, we argue that recognizing intuition and deploying it appropriately fills our research with a crucial attribute, i.e. authenticity. Lincoln and Guba (1986) introduced the idea of authenticity as a means to increase research rigour in response to the lack of attention in methodological approaches favoured by the positivist tradition to key issues such as power, representation, accountability, multiple values and so forth. These were key issues that inspired us to begin our research in conflict locations but the salience of the same issues became more prominent as our research evolved.

Rethinking Reflexivity: Beyond Introspection

While the concept of reflexivity has garnered attention in the social sciences, its application in conflict research is still underexplored, especially regarding how researchers navigate conflict zones. ² In much of the existing literature in conflict research, reflexivity has traditionally been approached through frameworks that emphasize the ethical responsibilities of researchers to remain neutral, transparent, and sensitive to the power dynamics between themselves and the communities they study. This approach has roots in post-positivist and critical theory traditions, where researchers are urged to be self-aware and transparent about how their identities, roles, and perspectives influence the interpretation of conflict dynamics (Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2019; Richardson, 2000). Moreover, the concept is deployed in contexts where there are concerns around safety, consent, and representation (Goodhand, 2000; Nordstrom & Robben, 1995), or as a methodological appendix, focusing on practical fieldwork challenges. Scholars have debated whether reflexivity should be approached as a personal, moral disposition (Ackerly & True, 2008), a political stance that critiques knowledge hierarchies (Haraway, 1988), or a methodological strategy to increase transparency and rigour (Bourdieu, 2003). However there remains limited consensus on what reflexivity does beyond introspection. In many empirical studies, little attention is given to its practical application and effectiveness in contexts where research encounters are marked by volatility and conflict, uncertainty, mistrust, and contested narratives.

Reflexivity in Conflict Zones: Navigating Contested Narratives, Uncertainty, and Positionality

In conflict zones, research sites are often marked by uncertainty, where researchers and even local actors are unaware of the full scope of events, and therefore simply learn to adapt to circumstances. In such contexts, both the researcher and participants navigate unpredictability together. Like all researchers, we entered our research fields with the understanding that local communities in a given field often have deep empirical knowledge, which shapes their perception of reality. While empirical realities preceded our arrival, the production of knowledge about those realities is deeply situated and relational. Individuals and communities have different perceptions and histories of their conflict affected areas, leading to diverse empirical realities.

To address this, we drew on our theoretical understandings, which we had developed through prior study before engaging in fieldwork. While local people may not be familiar with these theoretical frameworks, we had limited exposure to lived experiences on the ground. Local communities often question theoretical concepts while also gaining insights from them. Likewise, researchers test and refine their theoretical knowledge in response to the realities they observe. Through this dynamic exchange, knowledge is co-constructed, with both researchers and local communities actively shaping its development. Rather than solely gathering data, the researcher becomes an active participant, influencing and being influenced by these encounters (Wood, 2006). This is why constructivist reflexivity is crucial in conflict research, because it acknowledges the researcher’s role in shaping and being shaped by the research process. This position draws on a broader constructivist tradition, which we outline below.

Constructivist scholarship stresses the active role played by individuals in the social construction of social reality (Bryman, 2001). Often presented as an antithetical approach to objectivism, constructivism asserts that phenomena and meanings are produced via social interactions; are flexible and fluid; and are often constructed differently in different societies, contexts and times. This general approach is applied to researchers themselves whose interpretations and accounts of the social world are equally seen as constructed, fluid, indeterminate, and contextual. At the same time, the categories used by researchers to understand the world around them (categories such as violence) should be treated as constructions with meanings that are generated and modified in context. In this context, constructivist reflexivity offers a powerful and analytically productive framework. It emphasizes that knowledge is not passively extracted from the field but is actively co-constructed through the researcher’s positional identity, the field dynamics, and the interpretive process (Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2013).

To better explain our constructivist approach, it is useful to compare it with other ways researchers make sense of reflexivity in qualitative or conflict research. Our approach shares some similarities with others, but also differs in important ways. What makes our approach different than feminist reflexivity for example, is that the latter often centers on power, embodiment, and emotion from a positional politics of care and situated knowledge. While our approach shares the feminist concern with power dynamics, it is less explicitly tied to gendered structures. On the other hand, while decolonial reflexivity seeks to unsettle eurocentric epistemologies and re-centre indigenous or subaltern voices, our constructivist stance is more focused on dialogic engagement than epistemic rupture. Likewise, unlike poststructuralist reflexivity, which problematizes language, representation, and the instability of meanings, our approach is anchored in the belief that meanings can still be negotiated, if not fixed. What unites these traditions is an emphasis on reflexivity as political and relational, but constructivist reflexivity, as we use it, leans towards collaborative meaning-making rather than epistemological critique.

From this perspective, reflexivity is not merely a retrospective reflection but an ongoing epistemic practice that mediates how meaning is negotiated; which voices are amplified or silenced; and how power circulates in the research encounter. This orientation is particularly salient in conflict research, where researchers are never neutral observers and where the act of inquiry itself is embedded in broader social and political struggles. Furthermore, it highlights how even the researchers’ positionality changes over time and in different contexts: we carried out research in hostile contexts and yet the notion of violence and our understanding of it differed when we started our research and certainly when we had completed fieldwork and started our analysis and writing up. Furthermore, in reflecting upon our experience and in writing this paper, we both came to adjust how we understood and then made sense of violence and its significance in our respective research sites.

Methodology

In this research paper, we incorporate previous studies on political ethnography in conflict environments alongside the field experiences of two international PhD scholars from a Western university. Both researchers carried out doctoral fieldwork at approximately the same time. The third author was the academic supervisor. Researchers A and B conducted their fieldwork in distinct settings across two different countries. Researcher A undertook fieldwork in the Khyber agency within Pakistan’s erstwhile FATA region, and Researcher B conducted his research in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. The characteristics and severity of violence varied significantly based on the context. The FATA region has been the epicenter of global geopolitics for some time now. The region became a battleground in the proxy Cold War involving the US and Russia, and more recently China has aligned itself with the latter. ³ Within the research field, researcher A faced the risk of encountering violence ⁴ stemming from the intricate dynamics of geopolitics. In contrast to the FATA region, the conflict in Niger Delta is primarily driven by perceived injustices, state suppression, and socio-economic abandonment, which are deeply rooted in the historical context and socio-political dynamics of resource management in Nigeria. Researcher B worked in a conflict zone that involved a complex network of actors including political leaders, local authorities, and youth/militia groups, all competing for control over land, resources, and recognition. What researcher A and B shared was the experience of carrying out doctoral research in sites that are among the most dangerous on earth.

Researcher A’s fieldwork coincided with the early stages of post-conflict reconstruction in the FATA region, facilitated by a state-led democratization program that allowed local citizens to participate in the political process for the first time. As a Pakistani citizen from a different area, Researcher A was considered an ‘outsider’ in the FATA context. On the other hand, Researcher B, a native Ijaw, and former activist in the Niger Delta, focused on his community, making him an ‘insider’ in the research setting. This paper examines both insider and outsider perspectives, sharing our findings from conflict-affected areas. Both researchers approached their fields with an emphasis on a ‘bottom-up’ approach to understanding the actions and experiences of local elites and militants as they respond to state interventions. The data collected over the last seven years, including more recent information gathered by the authors for additional studies, offers insights into the lives of actors and groups deeply entangled in conflict.

The use of political ethnography in our respective field sites required careful adjustment of data collection methods to suit the unique socio-political environments. As our fieldwork progressed, our shifting positionalities (i.e., our insider and outsider statuses) influenced our research process, including our access, interpretations, the data collection tools, and the interactions that we deployed. These changing roles affected not only what kind of data we could collect, but also how trust and political meanings were shaped in each conflict setting. Our positions in the field affected access in different ways: in FATA, the outsider identity of Researcher A made it necessary to follow official and formal paths to enter the field, often depending on tribal elders, bureaucrats, or other gatekeepers. Initially, interviews were usually more formal and structured, with observations being cautious in tone. As the research fieldwork advanced, he became better known within the local community and was able to build stronger connections. As such, the interviews became more informal and unstructured. Despite this, access remained guided by the pre-existing power relations.

On the other hand, in the Niger Delta, Researcher B’s insider background allowed him to apply more flexible and informal methodological approaches, including informal, and at times, more emotional and spontaneous exchanges inside militia camps. Researcher B’s interactions often produced more personal and emotionally deep narratives concerning identity, injustice, and political struggle of the militants. Most importantly, these differences were not only logistical, but also reflected the local social and political cultures. In FATA, governance has traditionally been deeply connected to tribal traditions and authority, as well as a strong state presence, thus making information harder to access and at times risky. On the other hand, in the Niger Delta region, political power is shared among various informal actors such as youth groups, militants, and state officials, creating a more fluid and open atmosphere for research. Such a contrast provides valuable insight into how power, access, and legitimacy are shaped and questioned in each setting.

As part of our efforts to ensure consistency and depth in our interpretations, both Researcher A and B engaged in ongoing reflexive validation including critical self-reflection and regular discussions with our academic supervisor as well as cross-checking interpretations with participants during and after interviews. In addition, we used triangulation by combining interviews, observations, and informal conversations across diverse actors to ensure consistency and depth in our interpretations. In certain spaces such as nightclubs, newspaper stands, food stalls, and shopping markets, where the commonly known apologia of militancy and political change were openly discussed, we deliberately chose not to reveal ourselves as either insiders or outsiders in order to avoid influencing responses. This was an important part of our triangulation processes.

By anchoring the analysis in empirical field experiences from two conflict-affected settings and from an insider and outsider perspective, this paper demonstrates how constructivist reflexivity is central to ethical presence, epistemological accountability, and researcher survival. It thus calls for a rethinking of reflexivity not as an add-on to conflict methodology, but as an essential framework for making sense of the layered and power-saturated nature of field-based knowledge production. The subsequent sections delve deeply into negotiating reflexivity within an environment where individuals hold diverse perceptions of researchers, their roles, and personalities, and explore how researchers navigate various power structures in their work.

Negotiating Reflexivity: The Insider-Outsider Dynamics

In this section and subsequent ones, we delve into discussions about the application of reflexivity in the authors’ research, particularly examining the complex interplay of their positionality in terms of insider-outsider status. The insider–outsider debate holds particular significance in conflict research, where questions of access, trust, and positionality are deeply entangled with the political and ethical contours of the field. Regardless of adopting an insider, outsider, or hybrid stance, investigating our own settings presented both advantages and difficulties, given our inability to manage the unfolding of field events.

While insiders are often assumed to possess cultural fluency, social networks, and deeper contextual understanding, they may also face risks of over-identification, role conflict, or exposure to personal danger (Smyth, 2005). Being local offered Researcher B a foundational advantage to establish interpersonal connections with both ‘militants’ and key informants or non-militants, a process that might not be as straightforward for outsiders. Researcher B was able to relate more to the respondents on the basis of shared ethnic background, and hence could more easily feel the issues of the respondents. Additionally, his insider status meant that from the outset he already enjoyed relationships of trust with respondents, and so was able to get a quicker and deeper understanding of the life world of militants. Researcher B’s dual position as an insider to both the militants’ world and to academic discourse granted him a unique and valuable perspective for accessing and analyzing militants’ lived experiences through a nuanced, intersubjective academic lens. Engaging with militias underscores the importance of recognizing that communication itself can alter both the researcher’s and the militants’ knowledge and beliefs. However, the insider status posed difficulties for Researcher B, as he continuously struggled to mitigate bias and maintain emotional balance.

In contrast, outsiders can bring analytical distance and fewer embedded biases, yet often struggle to gain trust, navigate gatekeeping structures, or access sensitive knowledge in volatile environments (Smyth, 2005). Researcher A’s position as an outsider had certain advantages, especially when considered through the ideas of early scholars like Simmel (1950) and Merton (1972). These authors suggested that outsiders bring emotional distance and fewer embedded biases, which aids the researcher to explore local realities with a more critical and less biased lens. Such a distance can also bring insights, as Rosaldo (1993) argues, by making it easier to notice hidden structures of power and contradictions. However, in conflict zones like the FATA region, this distance can also be a drawback. Locals may see the researcher as disconnected or only interested in extracting valuable data, leading to mistrust and limited access to sensitive knowledge.

While emotional detachment supports critical analysis, it may also hinder mutual understanding and lead to the unintentional imposition of external values. In culturally complex settings like FATA, researchers often face practical and ethical barriers to accessing local realities. This is not to suggest that researchers in conflict zones should adopt a completely detached or neutral position, akin perhaps to Simmel’s (1950) ‘stranger’ position who is physically present but socially apart. This can create misunderstandings and mistrust. Instead, maintaining a balance between distance and meaningful embeddedness is crucial but hard to achieve. Therefore, researchers should not adopt a fully detached role. Instead, a balanced approach, neither fully inside nor outside the community, is necessary. Chaudhry (2018) refers to this as the role of the ‘in-betweener,’ someone who maintains critical distance while building respectful and engaged relationships.

For Researcher A, this balance was important. The research field presented initial challenges such as issues of trust, danger, suspicion, and accessing respondents safely. These kinds of challenges are often faced in research in conflict or high-risk areas (Nordstrom & Robben, 1995; Wood, 2006). As part of ethical responsibility, participants were informed that the study was conducted under the supervision of a Western university. This transparency was part of the commitment embedded in the university research ethics protocol, such as informed consent, but in some cases, it increased suspicion among locals, especially in an area where foreign involvement is often seen with some concern. This problem has also been reported by scholars working in postcolonial and security-sensitive settings (Scheper-Hughes, 2000; Sriram et al., 2009).

Despite this, for both Researcher A and B, being associated with academic activities and a Western university brought mostly advantages as it carried an element of esteem and recognition. Research participants would ask about affiliations with universities and were curious about ‘studying abroad’. This was seen as prestigious and not a barrier. It was not uncommon for respondents to ask for help to secure access to overseas universities for their children or friends, but this again became a source of ‘idle talk’ that cemented trust rather than created suspicion and division. However, being a researcher can be tricky as in the past, researchers have worked with the communities and not always been clear about the research rationale or objective. In some instances, including in the locations where both Researcher A and B carried our research, more sinister intentions have been hidden under the umbrella of research. Our affiliation to a university however was more of an advantage as for most of the respondents’ university research had less obvious negative incentives (such as commercial) and could in some instances ‘help’ respondents.

Moreover, although Researcher A was an outsider, shared moments and events helped him connect with people more easily and slowly build trust. As Nayaran (1993) and England (1994) remind us, researchers are not simply insiders or outsiders as our positions or statuses change depending on time, place, and the people we are working with. The insider–outsider binary is often invoked, but rarely interrogated as a set of divergent epistemic trajectories that shape the co-construction of knowledge in practice. While scholars increasingly critique this binary, emphasizing its fluid, relational, and situational nature (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009; Sultana, 2007), Haraway’s (1988) concept of situated knowledge further underscores that no researcher, insider or outsider, can claim a neutral, omniscient perspective. Instead, knowledge is always produced from a specific positional standpoint, shaped by power, identity, and the researcher’s embeddedness in the field. This perspective moves beyond treating positionality as a static category but positions it as an evolving identity that shifts across time, space, and social interaction.

While we initially approached our respective fields with what appeared to be clearly defined roles, i.e. Researcher A as an outsider and Researcher B as an insider, we recognize that these positions were neither static nor absolute. Our positionality was far more fluid than initially anticipated, and as our fieldwork progressed, our identities evolved in response to context, relationships, trust-building efforts, cultural immersion, emotional control, and feedback from participants. For instance, Researcher A’s local language skills and adaptive strategies gradually enabled a form of ‘insider-ness,’ while Researcher B’s external academic affiliations and reflexive distance introduced moments of ‘outsider’ detachment. This fluidity illustrates the situational and relational nature of insider/outsider statuses, and the limitations of treating either statuses as a fixed category (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009).

To track and make sense of these evolving positionalities, we both systematically used field diaries and reflexive notes throughout the research process. These allowed us to document shifts in perception, engagement, and identity as they occurred, and to critically reflect on how these influenced access, rapport, and data interpretation. This process supported a more transparent and accountable engagement with our roles in the field.

Despite this, we acknowledge that methodologically, this approach poses challenges. The shifting nature of positionality complicates the consistency of data interpretation, potentially introducing bias in how trust, access, or narratives were perceived and recorded. The risk of bias was a frequent topic of discussion with our academic supervisor. Furthermore, by relying on our own assessments of our positional shifts, we may have inadvertently under or overestimated our level of embeddedness or distance. Recognizing these limitations reinforces the need for continuous, context-sensitive reflexivity, not only as an ethical imperative but as a methodological strategy.

At one level reflexivity enabled us to scrutinize and reinvent our pre-determined beliefs. Despite the differences in our positionalities, we approached our field with a refined understanding of our positionality and reflexivity, enabling us to enter the research arena with an open and receptive attitude, allowing local insights to shape our understanding, as we shall see from the discussions in the next sections. The understanding or approach was refined in the sense that we had the privilege of spending one year ‘pre-fieldwork’ discussing inter alia fieldwork strategies and being critically challenged by our supervisor. In our respective fields, our objective was not to explore the theoretical frameworks of international development and governance through the perspectives of militants or local elites. Instead, we aimed to comprehend how these groups interpret rights, justice, state actions, citizenship, socio-economic and political engagement or exclusion, and how they then strategized based on these understandings. This approach kept us theoretically engaged with relevant debates while our empirical focus on militants’ and local elites’ roles encouraged adaptability in uncovering fresh perspectives for our research questions.

Before his field visit, Researcher B’s perception about militancy was shaped by his experiences as an activist whereby the Nigerian state and multinational oil companies were seen as responsible for causing grievances and frustrations within the Niger Delta region, leading to the emergence of militancy. As an insider, B faced the challenge of dealing with what Malinowski (1922) refers to as foreshadowed problems and preconceived ideas, i.e., a predetermined set of ideas developed before his field engagements. This approach contrasts with a less predetermined approach which builds on events that unfold naturally and are to explored accordingly. Insiders’ exposure to external field experiences or foreign contexts can also lead to changes in their initial perceptions and alter how they view their own fields. Through his exposure to Western universities and wider scholarship, researcher B broadened his horizons and began to see militancy from different perspectives. During fieldwork and data analysis, he started to understand the entrepreneurial role of militants and perceive militancy from a broader political-economy perspective, acknowledging the presence of personal interests.

To conclude this section on reflexivity and the differences between insiders and outsiders, it is important to note that both Researcher A and B were deeply aware that our research could have inadvertently exposed participants to elements of risk, with no effective mechanisms in place to monitor these risks. To navigate this challenge, Researcher A conducted interviews in the Jamrud Political Administration (PA) office, a location not targeted by drone strikes and operational within a high-security environment, where security measures against militant threats were strictly managed. Using his influence within the bureaucracy, Researcher A managed to secure an office space on the premises for interviews. In addition, the Assistant Political Agent (APA) appointed an official and a local leader to assist in data collection. The allocation of an office not only signified the state’s approval of the researcher’s activities but also highlighted the researcher’s position of power within the study. Power and ethics are integral to research in conflict settings. This raises a critical question: Is the accumulation and demonstration of power by researchers beneficial or harmful? The following section delves into the intricate dynamics of power, ethics, and reflexivity in conflict research and examines in what ways these influenced our research process.

Power Imbalance

The dynamics of power imbalances and the strategies to negotiate them differed for Researcher A and B. Researcher A lacked personal connections in a field dominated by powerful actors recovering from the aftermath of the war on terror, a research environment challenging even for insiders. This situation posed uncertainties, risks, and difficulties in gaining access to respondents. Researcher A realized his limited control over the field, and this led him to focus on building trust and accumulating (and exercising) power subtly for his own safety as well as that of his respondents. This involved utilizing personal connections, financial resources, and demonstrating his usefulness to respondents. In contrast, power accumulation was not a concern for researcher B. For B, reflexivity involved recognizing that relationships in the field are built on trust, and that there were no power imbalances among participants. This understanding enabled researcher B to access data solely based on his insider status. This section teases out these intricate dynamics of power imbalances for both insider and outsider positions, and describes how both researchers navigated them.

Both A and B entered their respective fields with distinct prior understandings of the local power dynamics. Researcher A lacked knowledge about key power figures, local political dynamics, the nature of these relationships, potential sources of conflict, and individuals to engage with or to avoid. His local social and political understanding was shaped primarily by media reports detailing the presence of militants, suicide bombings, and kidnappings in the area. This heightened his concerns about whom to trust and interview in the field. A similar challenge extends to insiders as well. For researcher B, the challenge of navigating a tense, conflict-ridden population to identify ‘real militants’ was difficult. Despite being an insider in the Niger Delta region, researcher B exercised caution in selecting interviewees, given the external tendency to perceive or label every youth as a potential militant. Furthermore, the amnesty program introduced by the Nigerian state, offering a welfare package, led to numerous claims of militancy by parties interested in accessing training, opportunities, and financial benefits. These issues posed challenges in terms of access and the collection of high-quality data.

To navigate these challenges, Researcher A’s initial strategy involved engaging with higher-ranking officials to establish a secure foothold in the field. His initial assumption about the site played a significant role in the decision to approach senior officials. There was an underlying belief that the state held control over governance matters and that engaging with state officials was the correct approach. When he arrived at the research site using higher bureaucratic channels for access, Researcher A quickly became conscious of the imbalance in power status between himself and the respondents, a realization documented early in his fieldwork diary.

‘Today, I utilized my contacts within the FATA Secretariat to inform the Assistant Political Agent (APA) of my forthcoming visit to the political administration's office. As I navigated past Peshawar city, crossing Raigi Lailma and the Industrial markets—where locals dispute state claims—I was stopped for a routine inspection at a checkpoint by the local Khassadar force. Identifying myself as the APA’s ‘guest,’ the checkpoint staff, forewarned of my arrival, courteously offered lunch or tea, which I politely declined due to time constraints and the urgency of my meeting with the APA. The Khassadar force leader, under directives from the APA’s office to ensure my safety, insisted on providing me with two personal security officers’ […] Upon reaching the political administration office with my security escort, we drew attention, which I found discomforting (possibly being mistaken for an important delegation). Outside, I observed approximately 50 tribal elders waiting to meet the APA, a scene that underscored the hardship some endure, regardless of age, in the harsh summer weather. My introduction to the APA’s office security by the accompanying Khassadars granted me immediate entry, a privilege that evoked gratitude yet empathy for those awaiting their turn, perhaps feeling marginalized by their lack of connections’ (Researcher A, Diary, 15 September 2016).

The diary entry suggests that Researcher A is both socially and politically networked. This scenario mirrors the theoretical frameworks of Barth (1959), Schaffer & Wen-Hsien (1975), North (1990), and Ribot and Peluso (2003), who discuss how local actors navigate power relations to secure resources. Ribot & Peluso’s (2003) concept of local actors strategically using social relationships to access resources resonates with Barth’s theory, where local actors utilize kinship and social connections to create opportunities for themselves.

While it was crucial to establish initial relationships with state officials, researcher A found it unsustainable to depend on them for long-term field access. This realization came over time, through personal reflection, fieldnotes, and conversations, when he noticed that locals were beginning to interpret his presence as a form of surveillance, positioning him as someone aligned with authority rather than as an independent researcher. Establishing a relationship with state officials also posed other challenges. Questions of power and ethics arose. Would respondents feel intimidated by his interactions at high levels, potentially impacting the data? Conversely, how could respondents trust the researcher unless his presence was validated through the approval of high-ranking officials? These questions were continuously present throughout fieldwork, challenging the standard ethical boundaries that assume a more fixed and stable research context. Researcher A’s association with power made some locals hesitant to speak openly or share certain stories, but for other respondents, the same association legitimized his presence. Access to the field was not just about logistics but a deeply political and ultimately contested process. These experiences highlighted how the researcher’s position influenced not only who participated but also what kind of information was shared.

In such circumstances, what should a researcher do: adhere to university guidelines or risk their own safety? This situation prompted Researcher A to reflect on the power dynamics within the field, and think carefully about his role and its effects. Reflexivity helped Researcher A understand that discomfort and mistrust in such settings are not signs of failure but important ethical prompts that reveal how power and trust shape the research process in complex ways. As a response to these realisations, researcher A drew three broad conclusions that impacted the remainder of his data collection:

(a) The importance of building trust with respondents and cultivating relationships within the community. Trust, in this case, was developed over time through shared interactions, not simply ‘given’ or ‘authorised’ by officials.

(b) Investing in shared commonalities. Researcher A began to highlight cultural and experiential commonalities with respondents, not as a tactic but as a way of establishing a more ethical and dialogic presence in the field.

(c) Changes in research technique. Researcher A shifted his questioning style from direct questioning to a softer narrative based approach. Initially the focus was on more sensitive topics like political changes, its usefulness to the region and misappropriations. However, respondents avoided discussions on such sensitive topics. In response, researcher A shifted his line of inquiry towards governance through examples from daily life, allowing meanings to emerge in a more natural and open manner. Adopting a ‘softer approach’ in this way, he engaged in informal discussions around events and stories related to economic and political challenges in people’s daily governance challenges. This approach was successful because it made discussions a bit more ‘abstract’ (i.e., less personal and sensitive) and as a consequence, respondents came to relate more to researcher A, which helped build trust. This, in turn, enabled further interactions with local actors, with respondents speaking through personal stories or lived experiences. In other words, respondents set the terms of what they wanted to share.

What makes these shifts unique is that they were not based on pre-designed research plans. Rather, they emerged gradually through critical self-awareness and constant adjustment to the complexities of power in the field. Rather than simply adapting to ‘what works,’ reflexivity helped researcher A see that knowledge was actively shaped by his presence, and recognise that meaningful data often required the researcher to step back, listen carefully, and allow participants to shape the direction of inquiry.

Researcher A’s observations and experiences in the field capture this insight well. He found that in FATA, the state had a constraining control over violence, a situation mirrored in the Niger Delta region. As such, when reflections about constant negotiation of power in the field arise, it is important to recognize that all actors, including participants, possess some degree of power, formal or otherwise. This power is produced, negotiated and contested not only by the state but by a range of local actors. For this reason, it became essential for researcher A to develop a robust awareness of these dynamics. He needed to step back, observe carefully, and allow himself the space to understand what was truly unfolding in the field.

Establishing a foothold was easier for Researcher B since he was a local who was well-versed in local knowledge, politics, and the profiles of individuals. He also had an established network of connections. Unlike Researcher A, Researcher B never felt the need to accumulate power to access respondents in the field. Researcher B had assumed that power dynamics were balanced and that access to data was more straightforward by virtue of his status as an insider. However, contrary to the prevailing understanding in existing literature that insiders have easy access to data, this is not always the case in conflict zones.

In such contexts, our findings indicate that access to data and interviews can be contingent on the social standing of the researcher within their community. Researcher B’s ability to collect data was facilitated by various factors, including his family background (his father was a respected political figure in the area), past activism, and foreign connections. Despite this, he too had to establish connections and this took time, as he had to navigate various channels to gain recognition for his work. Access to data however will not be as readily available certainly to outsiders and arguably to many ‘insiders’ who are less recognized by the community and lack the social and political power that Researcher B possessed.

This illustrates that Researcher B’s approach to the field was facilitated by his social and political standing. However, in terms of his positionality, Researcher B had entered the research field with a layered identity i.e., simultaneously being a community member as well a western university trained academic. As he reflected in earlier work (Tantua, 2015), this dual positioning led him to question how people might have shaped their stories to align with shared beliefs, ‘shared’ in that respondents may have been trying to work out ‘his’ beliefs and wanted to align with them. Further his status as an insider kept on evolving in the field, and this position brought with it a unique mix of challenges and possibilities. As we have seen in earlier discussions, on the one hand, it gave him access and built deep trust with participants. However, on the other hand, it also meant he had to be very thoughtful about how his past as an activist, his personal emotions, and his close connection to the community might affect not only how he collected data, but also how he interpreted the stories told by militants.

So rather than seeing his background as a bias to be minimized, Researcher B embraced a reflexive, constructivist approach, understanding that knowledge was shaped through his interactions with participants. These reflections became valuable data, offering insights into how militancy was explained, justified, and performed. The emotional weight of hearing stories of violence and betrayal was also significant, prompting researcher B to take breaks, write reflective journals, and seek guidance from his academic mentor. These moments of reflexive self-examination helped him slightly separate out empathetic understanding from critical analysis, and allowed him to see that different groups, i.e. militants, elites, and locals, each presented their own versions of truth, shaped by their unique experiences, memories, and positions of power.

Thus, the relevance of reflexivity here is that it reflects a complex and evolving process from an insider and activist to the process of gaining new knowledge, to then reconstructing knowledge with militants at the field, and finally becoming a custodian of confidential knowledge where he had to make bold research decisions so that the presentation of findings did not harm his research respondents. The practice of co-constructing knowledge in the field led to numerous instances where both researcher A and B became custodians of sensitive information. This presented significant challenges around ethics, trust, and moral accountability. For example, Researcher B was aware of accounts describing how militants engaged with the Nigerian Army using cultural deities, as well as the new tactics they employed. For him, this knowledge existed somewhere between cultural belief and tactical reality; these practices served as a form of spiritual protection during fierce battles for the militants.

This placed Researcher B in a difficult and complex ethical dilemma: should he reveal these cultural rituals in full or protect the trust of those who had shared them? Researcher B chose partial disclosure, referring only briefly to the use of deities in militant engagement without revealing the deeper details of how these practices operated in the field. We believe this approach was fully aligned with ethical research standards in conflict settings, particularly following the “do no harm” principle, which aims to protect the lives and safety of respondents. In doing so, B sought to strike a balance i.e., by honouring the confidentiality entrusted to him as an insider while also fulfilling his academic responsibility to handle sensitive information with care. This, in our view, reflects the responsibility of being a custodian of confidential knowledge, not merely a gatherer of data. Such ethical judgments are important not only for the safety of both researchers and respondents, but also for shaping what ultimately becomes part of the knowledge-making process.

In a nut shell, Researcher B’s approach to reflexivity was deeply embedded in the emotional, political, and experiential terrain of being an insider in the Niger Delta conflict. However, what makes conflict reflexivity unique in B’s case is not only the insider identity, but also the volatile environment in which that identity was constantly renegotiated. B’s positionality demanded an iterative form of reflexivity: sometimes political (navigating state suspicion), sometimes emotional (processing grief and loss), and sometimes methodological (recalibrating research questions in real time).

Nevertheless, returning to the discussion of gaining access, it is important to note that access to data also hinges on the perceived utility for respondents. In other words, respondents weigh the benefits of participating in research. As discussed, our affiliation with a foreign university as doctoral researchers was particularly appealing to our respondents. They believed that granting interviews to us would lend weight to their perspectives and ensure that their voices were heard in global circles, particularly in the West. Being recognized as an insider with links to a Western university implies that B was perceived as having a blend of modern academic knowledge and substantial connections. In other words, he held power, an assertion that holds equally true for researcher A.

In FATA, being a PhD researcher placed A in a perceived position as ‘elite’ and ‘fortunate,’ with a secure career and background. Many individuals recognized that A’s role could potentially offer opportunities for themselves or their family members. Numerous people approached A, hoping to find solutions to their problems. Additional details from A’s diary account disclosed:

After exiting the APA office, I was approached by one of the Lungi holders who inquired whether I could help him secure an appointment with the APA to discuss a governance matter. At that moment, I felt a sense of helplessness, and, with regret, I apologized, explaining that as a researcher, and not a member of any significant visiting delegation, I lacked the authority or influence needed to address his concern. (Researcher A, Diary, 15 September 2017).

As researchers, we occupy what are often perceived as privileged positions, yet disclosing our occupation becomes essential to mitigate the high likelihood of potential conflicts emerging from dispute resolution. In situations where tensions escalate between parties, researchers can be viewed with skepticism. Our commitment to exploring diverse narratives can inadvertently lead to misunderstandings or heighten insecurities among parties. Time spent researching one group might be misconstrued as bias, casting doubt on the researcher’s positionality. Thus, maintaining a professional stance of non-judgment, while abstaining from decision-making during the observation process, ensured that our actions did not adversely affect any of our informants, and our interactions with them.

We acknowledge our vulnerability in the field as we often found our movements and contacts directed by others. Both A and B noted a distinct form of power imbalance as the research process commenced. The imbalance, however, was not solely based on our social statuses but rather determined by who controlled the production of knowledge, with key informants, local elites, activists, and individuals identified as militants attempting to guide the direction of our research in organic and unforeseeable ways, effectively placing us under the influence of those we studied. In summary, our positions as insiders or outsiders were constrained in terms of power relative to our respondents and influenced decisions about who to interview and what they disclosed during discussions or interviews.

Despite being an insider, B experienced vulnerability in the field. However, this did not indicate a lack of understanding of his objectives. Rather, it highlighted a shift in power dynamics in the data generation process of his study, where obtaining consent became a complex balancing act involving him, key informants, and militias. Although both A and B entered the field with specific themes we aimed to explore, the interviewees held the power to choose responses, demonstrating that power does not solely reside with the researcher. Local actors and participants also possess control over the research direction and power dynamics. For example, while researchers may control how knowledge is presented, local actors possess considerable influence over the generation of that knowledge. In essence, while researchers aim to extract information from respondents in the field and have some control over what information is disseminated, the participants substantially dictate the content and flow of knowledge production. Being an insider often led to the assumption that respondents’ answers were understood without need for clarification (prolepsis), highlighting the importance of triangulation with other militias or key informants to bridge gaps where information might not be fully elaborated or might be overstated.

The perceived power imbalances between researcher and respondents have implications as they can disrupt the information gathering process and the development of new understandings and interpretations. While Researcher B’s own perspectives evolved through interactions with interviewees, the framing of his questions, how he presented them, and the interviewees’ perceptions of his objectives influenced and potentially altered their responses and the expression of their thoughts. Therefore, similar to Researcher B’s approach, face-to-face engagement is crucial for the success of insider studies in conflict research. However, researcher B discovered that this method did not guarantee an objective perspective. Instead, it was prone to unique and subjective experiences shaped by the research process itself. Summarizing, the epistemological and ontological considerations within the research in the Niger Delta region, led researcher B to engage with the militants of the Niger Delta from an emic perspective. This approach leveraged the intersubjective capacity of researcher’s B’s insider status, acknowledging that knowledge and reality are inherently social constructs. Moreover, achieving a nuanced understanding of reality, anchored in specific contexts of time and space, necessitated a deep intersubjective alignment between the researcher and the militants, a goal that prior research on the Niger Delta conflict may not have fully realized.

In sum, achieving reflexivity in our approach involved two distinct paths for both insider and outsider. Researcher B transitioned from an activist to an academic to maintain a balanced distance from field respondents. In contrast, Researcher A made efforts to forge closer ties with the community, striving to develop connections to a degree that would allow him to feel closer to them and understand their perspectives. The following sections delve more into this topic, exploring how both researchers A and B navigated their research field to achieve neutrality in their approach.

Impression Management

A key area for us to navigate around issues of power and trust related to maintaining neutrality in our social positions, focusing on what we call ‘impression management’, a concept developed by Goffman (1959) to describe how researchers present themselves in their social interactions on the field through their behavior and overall appearance in order to influence how others perceive them. Both researcher A and B faced contrasting challenges in impression management within their respective research sites. Researcher A had to demonstrate that he shared social and cultural commonalities with local residents (a task insider do not need to undertake), whereas researcher B focused on maintaining neutrality and avoiding perceptions of change as a result of his exposure to Western countries. During Researcher A’s visits to the Jamrud political administration office, he made subtle changes to his presentation of self to strike a balance between a person who is respected and someone who is comfortable and familiar with the local environment. Researcher A avoided from using branded apparel in favour of shalwar kameez (local attire) together with Peshawari chappal (traditional men’s sandals). Additionally, researcher A adopted local customs such as growing a trimmed beard, engaging in social rituals like drinking tea with locals in canteens located in the office, exchanging cigarettes, having informal chats about social and political issues, adapting eating habits to include local dishes like lamb and kabuli rice (while adhering to research ethics regarding hygiene), and attending informal gatherings.

Careful attention to how we were perceived directly impacted how open participants were during interviews and what information they chose to disclose. In the Niger Delta region, even as an insider, it was crucial for researcher B to carefully manage his personality and appearance to avoid making research participants feel inferior or suggesting affluence, which could increase expectations for informal incentives to facilitate access, known locally as dropping something to open the road. These experiences align with Goffman’s (1959) observations that individuals, whether intentionally or unintentionally, perform roles to influence others’ perceptions. Thus, researcher B helped manage local impressions by communicating with respondents in local pidgin English dialects and occasionally adopting new phrases such as ‘gbenge the best’ or ‘bust and clamp’ learned during field interactions with militias. The former phrase refers to confronting oil companies with threats to negotiate payments or contracts, while the latter involves sabotaging pipelines to secure repair contracts. Being an insider thus provided researcher B with unique insights into militia activities and fostered trust and rapport, enabling more open and frank discussions about their experiences.

The need to adopt local jargon or unwritten codes of conduct varied based on the circumstances and the specific information sought. For insiders, learning and using local jargon may be straightforward, but outsiders might find it challenging. In the contexts of both the Niger Delta and FATA, adhering to local jargon and practices signified compliance with local ethics and norms, which was essential and unavoidable given the nature of our research. Being an insider negated the need for feigning friendships to elicit information, a strategy sometimes necessary for outsiders, as noted by Duncombe and Jessop (2002). It also facilitated the development of genuine trust and encouraged openness among militia members.

Researcher A found it challenging to communicate using local jargon and employed other tactics to demonstrate his connections with local residents. Researcher A consistently sought to identify shared aspects of identity with respondents such as ethnicity, religion, local connections, social networks, cultural norms, and power dynamics. These shared identities were then continuously renegotiated and adjusted on a daily basis, serving as a means to ‘manage’ his presence and demonstrate that he was part of the same community.

Researcher A and B’s experiences highlight the complex challenges faced by researchers in conflict research. As researchers engage in impression management, they gradually establish connections with the local environment, sometimes becoming involved in local politics or daily routine matters, ultimately leading to the formation of friendships with locals and emotional connections. Consequently, issues of emotional management become integral to the process of reflexivity in conflict research. The next section shows the varying degrees of emotional involvement experienced by both researchers based on their insider or outsider statuses.

Balancing Emotions: Staying Connected

There were instances when our interactions with research participants deepened, evolving beyond a researcher-respondent dynamic to one where we were perceived as trusted confidants, capable of offering advice. Researcher B experienced this phenomenon at a militants’ training camp. Many respondents sought his guidance on suitable skills training, thinking he was an expert. However, researcher B remained wary of blurring the lines between his identity as a researcher and the research subjects, providing only honest advice while maintaining boundaries. Researcher B’s field encounters also evoked emotional responses, that he continually struggled to deal with. Many narratives of events paralleled his experiences of activism in the Niger Delta region, particularly regarding joining protests against oil pollution and poor livelihood conditions. On the whole, this induced empathy and built trust with the local community.

An example of how researcher B grappled with emotions is reflected in a conversation he had with a militia member who tragically lost six children to a cholera outbreak within the span of only a week. The issue of contaminated drinking water, sourced from polluted rivers and streams also used for defecation, underscores the root causes of the armed conflict. While the death of the children resonated strongly with researcher B’s activism and activist ethics, he had to manage these emotions, a process that continues to evolve. In certain fieldwork contexts such as nightclubs, eateries, and newspaper stands where discussions on militancy occur, researcher B deliberately disclosed minimal personal information to avoid influencing responses. Here, he initiated conversations on self-determination and resource control to elicit responses, drawing on his identity as an Ijaw and insider observations contributing to the research data. Additionally, researcher B’s efforts to explore the origins of militancy prompted respondent reflections on his insider status. In an interaction, one respondent for example remarked, ‘bros you know wetin dey Na (Bros, you know what they are), implying B was expected to understand that militancy is fundamentally a commercial venture. This posed a significant challenge because it implied researcher B had insight into militant activities. Another instance involved a respondent repeatedly implying B’s familiarity with the subject, urging him to ‘you know, you can recall’.

‘You (me) can recall that the Pere of Amabulu was the pioneer chairman of the Supreme Egbesu Assembly (SEA)…You (me) also remember the Oboama flow station, were protesters going from community to community to sensitize the people, and the soldiers opened fire at them (Tantua, 2015, p. 60).

In this scenario, the respondent highlighted the intersubjective states and anticipatory assumptions that exist between researcher and researched. These mutual reflexive experiences clearly underlined researcher B’s subjectivity and its impact on shaping the construction of narrative accounts, underscoring the inevitability of our participation in this process (Quilley & Loyal, 2005).

Regarding the balance between objectivity and subjectivity in our research, we experienced a sense of emotional connection with participants and the research process itself, rather than feeling detached. This connection was nurtured while meticulously considering feedback to understand the diverse perspectives on governance or militancy. Being an insider often meant a deeper emotional involvement, a contrast to outsiders who might not share this same level of engagement. A lack of connectedness can be problematic for research potentially leading to disinterest or even aggressive responses from participants. To address this issue, researcher A actively immersed himself in local events and developed an emotional attachment to the social and political life of respondents. This approach involved presenting himself as someone genuinely interested in understanding daily governance opportunities and barriers, the political activities of local elites, and the challenges faced by them. In his fieldwork, researcher A observed that many poor people lacked knowledge of revenue matters and were being influenced by local brokers who had forged close relationships with revenue officials. Information about their rights and entitlements was often not shared, leaving the poor vulnerable to manipulation by local elites. This evoked sympathy and sometimes anger in researcher A, who sometimes responded instinctively and emotionally by offering assistance in the form of advice, particularly when approached by them.

By addressing such issues, and participating in small-scale events, researcher A aimed to serve two objectives: (a) to initiate a dialogue with the poor and those involved in decision-making processes, and (b) to gain insights into the internal dynamics of micro-politics. A primary benefit of (a) was to render research more ‘inclusive,’ enabling a participatory environment for subjects to share their views fully. Moreover, it ensured that participants gained, in monetary or non-monetary terms, from the research. While objective (b) did not directly address governance policy change, it nevertheless allowed researcher A to understand the dispute dynamics that underpinned local political parties’ engagement in civil matters. Researcher A carefully examined these cases with the consent of involved parties, making inquiries about their nature to relevant officers. The purpose of these inquiries was to help people by making them better understand their cases, rather than resolve them, ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of everyday politics.

Our emotional positioning and the way we managed how others perceived us during fieldwork had a strong influence not only on the relationships we developed with participants, but also on how we later understood and interpreted the data. In the case of FATA, Researcher A’s outsider position made it necessary to be very careful with impression management, especially in the initial stages when both community members and state officials often viewed him with suspicion. As he describes in his earlier work (Shah, 2018) given that showing emotional engagement in the field can potentially be read as bias or manipulation, it was important to maintain a certain level of emotional control in order to build and sustain trust with formal gatekeepers and elite informants. Still, this emotional distance was not always fixed. The margins began to reduce gradually, particularly when people shared stories of personal suffering such as when local elders talked about how they were displaced by the war on terror or others talked about their personal experiences of violence in the region. These emotionally charged stories led Researcher A to view ideas like legitimacy, political leadership and authority in a more empathetic manner, beyond what a neutral or detached analysis might offer. This highlights how emotional responses can shape not just our relationships in the field, but also influence the kind of narratives researchers are told and the depth of access that can be granted.

In the Niger Delta, Researcher B’s position as an insider created a different set of emotional and impression challenges. Because of his Ijaw background and his earlier involvement in activism, many participants assumed he shared the same ideological political beliefs. This often resulted in complicated personal ethical questions for the researcher around how to present himself and his research within the field i.e., whether to show too much emotional agreement in order to confirm assumptions of political alignment or not to show emotional involvement which might discourage further discussion and trust-building. Balancing these expectations thus became a sensitive task. It required careful management to keep the conversations open while also maintaining academic integrity. In one particular instance, when Researcher B challenged a militia leader’s justification of violence, the respondent grew visibly cold and effectively ended the conversation by disengaging. Conversely, during another informal interview in a camp, emotional engagement and shared storytelling opened up a detailed discussion of internal rivalries and leadership tensions. These insights would not have emerged in a formal interview setting or if the right kind of emotional engagement had not taken place.

In both cases, emotional management was not a distraction but a crucial methodological and analytical tool. It shaped the kinds of stories that were told, how we heard them, and how we ultimately interpreted their meaning. Rather than seeing emotion and impression control as contaminating our data, we treated them as constitutive of the research process requiring ongoing negotiation between empathy and critical distance. Our shared reflections helped identify moments where personal experience enhanced empirical insights, and others where it risked skewing interpretation, especially around themes of legitimacy, violence, and authority. Drawing from both our field experiences, we argue that emotional responses such as empathy, fear or discomfort, directly shaped how we approached participants, interpreted their narratives, and made analytical decisions. These experiences show that the boundary between the personal and empirical often collapse in practice. We therefore approach these blurred lines as a defining feature, and not a flaw, of conflict ethnography. By embracing constructivist reflexivity, we acknowledge that our interpretations are always relational; they are co-produced through situated encounters where power, emotion, and context interact. Ultimately, we see emotional management and impression control as essential dimensions of field-based knowledge production in conflict research. They not only shape what data is produced, but also how it is interpreted. Making these processes transparent contributes to more ethically grounded and robust research in volatile environments.

We recognize the viewpoint that all research is essentially a practical endeavor, necessitating the application of judgment within specific contexts (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1983), rather than merely following methodological prescriptions. Hence, we do not claim that conflict research is devoid of values. The opposite is true. Conflict research is replete with values but these are neither static nor fixed; instead they are continuously negotiated and contextualized. Our choice of perspectives and our methods for data analysis and interpretation inherently involved elements of subjectivity influenced by the contested narratives, uncertainty, and volatility in the field.

This paper is seen as a collaborative effort, involving researchers, the research data, and the interviewees, to construct a deeper sense understanding of a specific phenomenon. This collaboration positions us as co-constructors of social knowledge, acknowledging the intersubjective dynamics inherent in the research process (Finlay, 2003). Nonetheless, we encountered challenges in defining our identity along the outsider-insider continuum during field research, as we continually grappled with maintaining emotional detachment from the everyday realities we were immersed in.

Conclusion

During our research, we observed that fieldwork immersion, including ethics in conflict environments is not something formal or institutionalized. Instead, our research decisions were often guided by self-intuitive instincts. The ethical practices that seemed appropriate at any given moment became the ethics we adhered to during that time. This highlights the fluid and situational nature of ethics in conflict research, where adaptability and intuition play crucial roles in guiding ethical decision-making, rather than relying solely on pre-established frameworks.

This raises an important question about the relationship between the need for adaptation in research in volatile context and standardized ethics approval procedures and frameworks. Are the two compatible? Adapting and adaptive research imply the introduction of elements of flexibility to research. The need for flexibility can arise for a number of reasons including physical safety, emotional challenges, new empirical discoveries, impediments placed on the research by the context, and so forth. At one level, high-risk environments often found in conflict research require higher levels of institutional ethical oversight. However, if the institutional ethical oversight only becomes synonymous with procedures and protocols, it will increasingly become detached from the very values that need to underpin conflict research. This is the challenge as the oversight for ethics becomes increasingly institutionalised. From our experience, we conclude that the best way to bring institutional ethical procedures and the need for adaptation in conflict settings together, is for the latter to be clearer and more explicit about the core values it upholds and cherishes on the one hand, and for the former to introduce mechanisms that accommodate these values. It is the awkward silence that pushes institutionalised ethics and the need for adaptations apart, forcing in some cases, researchers to engage with institutionalised ethics as a bureaucratic barrier to overcome. Our approach centres on values because we believe this will improve not weaken standards, and strengthen the commitment to research that is transparent, reflexive, and accurate.

In this paper we argue that the best way to navigate power dynamics within a field is to be constantly reflexive. And that reflexivity is not uniform, but entails the researcher continually and intuitively adopts different strategies in different context to immerse within the field. This is a more tailored and context specific approach. In this regard, we explored the intricate dynamics of reflexivity and revealed the complex relationship between our own identities shaped by insider and outsider statuses, and the diverse contexts of conflict zones. Drawing from our own experiences in the field using political ethnographic methods in two distinct conflict settings, the paper discussed how we encountered multiple challenges in navigating power dynamics and managing our relationships with respondents, including emotional involvement, impression management, and balancing power and status. The nature of these challenges differed in many perspectives, with various strategies employed by both researchers to ensure they effectively navigated these challenges.

In sum, knowledge production in conflict settings is not a neutral process but a deeply situated and relational one, shaped by the researcher’s positionality, strategies of access, and interpretive lenses. While empirical realities exist before the researcher’s arrival, knowledge about these realities is co-constructed through power-laden interactions between researchers and participants. Both insider and outsider researchers navigate distinct trajectories, each facing unique risks and opportunities, yet both must exercise reflexive awareness to negotiate access, build trust, and interpret knowledge in ethically responsible ways. In doing so, they construct and reconstruct their positionality in response to evolving field conditions, and these reflexive shifts shape what knowledge is produced and how it is interpreted. Constructivist reflexivity, understood as a continuous and critical engagement with one’s positionality, assumptions, and relational dynamics, offers a robust framework for understanding how knowledge is shaped in the field. It moves beyond static notions of positionality, emphasizing reflexivity as an adaptive and protective practice that enables researchers to remain attuned to power, risk, and ethical engagement. In conflict zones, where meanings are contested and field dynamics are volatile, this reflexive approach is not just an ontological or epistemological position but a methodological tool for interrogating how researchers both influence and are influenced by the research process. By highlighting how insider and outsider researchers face different but equally complex field trajectories, constructivist reflexivity strengthens our understanding of knowledge production as an active, negotiated, and power-sensitive process.

Finally, we are aware of the increasing emphasis placed on training and supporting early career researchers like ourselves. While we have discussed the importance and challenges of adaptive context-specific reflexivity in volatile environments, we want to conclude with a brief reflection on whether our experience can be more systematically integrated into training initiatives for other early career researchers. We offer two points for reflection. First, although there is now greater acceptance of reflexivity in many social sciences, the discursive spaces that might help researchers reflect about adaptive and context-specific research, remain limited. In our view, reflexivity adds to the transparency and validity of research findings, and therefore by implication it contributes to research accuracy. In supporting early career researchers therefore, training support needs to protect the discursive spaces in which discussions on reflexivity take place. Second, even before we embarked on our research, we already had significant experience of the volatile and conflict environments where we would work. This was overwhelmingly an advantage. However, when faced with challenges in the field, our immediate response was to ‘stick with it’ and persist. Today, we would advise early career researchers not to be obsessed with ‘persistence’. Conflict research can be physically, socially, politically and emotionally tough even when we have a priori experience of the research environment. Adaptability means as researchers, we need to pay greater attention to the rhythm and tempo of our research, and accept that we can be vulnerable and are de facto working in fragile contexts. Taking this message into systematic training for early career challenges will be a challenge as long as there is pressure to ‘stick with it’ or funding does not permit more adaptable interactions in the field, including with well-deserved and much needed intervals.