Helen Sampson
Seafarers International Research Centre
Cardiff University
Contextualise the field drawing
on the Qualiti review of risks to
researchers
Provide an update on the field
Ambient risk
Physical
Emotional
Situational risk (to do with researcher identity)
Ambient risk as an amplifier of situational risk
Ambient risk combined with situational risk
Recent accounts of risk
Conflict zones
Secondary sources
Impact of trauma on researcher (being human!)
Personal research experience and writing
(Sampson and Thomas 2003, Sampson et al
2008)
Qualiti Inquiry in researcher risk (Bloor et al
2007)
Broader literature
Bloor, M., B. Fincham and H. Sampson (2007) QUALITI (NCRM)
Commissioned Inquiry into the Risk to Well-being of Researchers in
Qualitative Research. Cardiff: QUALITI.
Burr, G. (1996) ‘Unfinished Business: Interviewing Family Members
of Critically Ill Patients’, Nursing Inquiry 3(3): 172–7.
Etherington, K. (1996) ‘The Counsellor as Researcher: Boundary
Issues and Critical Dilemmas’, British Journal of Guidance and
Counselling 24(3): 339–46.
Sampson, H., Bloor, M., Fincham, B. (2008) 'A Price Worth Paying?
Considering the 'Cost' of Reflexive Research Methods and the
Influence of Feminist Ways of 'Doing', Sociology, 42(5): 919-933.
Sampson, H., Thomas, M. (2003) ‘Lone Researchers at Sea: gender,
risk and responsibility’ Qualitative Research, 3(2): 165-189.
Warden, T. (2013) ‘Feet of clay: confronting
emotional challenges in ethnographic experience’
Journal of Organisational Ethnography 2(2) pp150172
‘On the second day I found myself flattened by a
car to avoid getting shot by a woman seeking
revenge for her husband's murder in the town
market, and on the third day I was sprinting away
from a knife fight at a local hang-out’
(Gill 2004)
Working with sensitive topics and in
emotionally charged settings
[on working with families of terminally ill]
...........The effect of being involved in, and in a
sense, sharing the private world of people in
despair, can be a ‘psychologically and emotionally
wrenching’ experience (Burr 1996:176)
Trying to interview people who were so ill was
heartbreaking because they were so very
unhappy...I would be very very reluctant to repeat
the exercise (researcher quoted in Sampson et al
2008)
“I am reminded of an American colleague who
recently left Morocco because he received
death threats, a Palestinian ethnographer
wary about continuing a project in Israel,
and a Welsh colleague fearful in Yemen
during terrorist attacks”
(Gill 2004)
“That I could be hated like that – seemingly because of
my colour alone – was a new situation for me. It was
the inability to explain myself, or to enter into debate
on a basis that would not be marked by race as an
essential and insurmountable category that I
considered most distressing. It was a slow, painful
process to realise that my colour was not a neutral or
irrelevant feature of myself, but rather infested with a
meaning of its own, beyond my definitional control.”
(Schramm 2005:176)
“We should not forget that sexual harassment
and violence are part of most ethnographers’
social environment at ‘home’. If it becomes
more acute during the fieldwork, it is due to
them being cut off from their normal net of
protection, in addition to being in a new
environment and thus less able to minimise
risks.”
(Loftsdóttir 2002:309)
Role conflict
As I listened to some of these stories with my
‘researcher’ ears, I became uncomfortable when I
realised I was thinking ‘this is really good stuff’ [...] I
was thinking that the material they were giving me
would be very useful for my thesis[...] I felt shocked
that I might, even for one moment, lose my counsellor
sensitivity (Etherington 1996:342)
Reviving disturbing memories
My own memories surfaced as I recognised
similarities in experiences even though my
own time as a refugee was nowhere near as
traumatic. I found myself revisiting old
territory and thinking about the kinds of
things I would have preferred to forget
(quoted in Sampson et al 2008
Feelings of betrayal
the identifications, dis-identifications, and
attachments [...] are (I think) a necessary part
of the rapport building process but it is not
something that one can simply leave at the
office at the end of the day
Emotional loss
I felt very lonely [...] I pined for my life in the
field and began to feel very depressed
Physical risk
Professional risk – being on the ‘wrong’ side of
the fence (Possick 2009)
Emotional risk- the impact of trauma and just
being human
Working with suicide notes
The records of social workers
The records of animal shelters
Tara Warden (2013) account of surviving in the
violent context of Guatemala (work with sex
workers)
Suffering PTSD
Unable to write
Low self esteem
Life changing exposure to loss and to societal
violence
Raising awareness
Planning (reduce risk)
Mobilising personal support
Institutional support