First Encounters: Early Career Researchers and Fieldwork

Abstract

This section of practice notes is written by early career researchers, reflecting on their first experiences of fieldwork in human rights-related settings. It has two sources of inspiration, the submission to JHRP of a practice note on this subject (Browne and Moffett’s piece) and the subsequent realization by the journal editors that although there is a growing literature on challenging fieldwork, there is little that directly addresses the challenges facing first time researchers. In the practice notes, authors address questions such as: † What knowledge and skills should researchers have before first conducting human rights-related fieldwork? † Are these requirements met by the training that NGOs, universities and others provide? † Are there attributes and sensibilities that can only be acquired by doing fieldwork (‘through research’—Darling, p. 201), and how should the divide between the class or training room and the field be addressed? The authors are from the global North working in the North, from the North working in the South, and from the South working in the South. They come from a range of academic disciplines, and reflect the fact that engagement with the practice and ethics of field research differs not only between academia and practice, but also between academic disciplines. The selection of notes presented here is by no means comprehensive. For example, none of the researchers conducted research on perpetrators, with the particular challenges that such research brings. All are currently located in academia rather than NGOs or civil society groups, although each of the contributions reflects on the links between human rights-related research and pressure for social and political change. The section also does not investigate what is specific about human rights research—and uses the term ‘human rights-related research’ deliberately, to designate a broader category of research on violence, conflict, vulnerable groups, and so on. As such, a gap remains on questions such as what is distinctive about human rights research (subject matter? normative reference points?) and how this label itself shapes research—for