Safeguarding and Agency: Methodological Tensions in Conducting Research with Survivors of Sexual Violence in Universities

Abstract

This paper examines the tension between safeguarding measures and participant agency in conducting feminist interviews with survivors of sexual violence in universities. There is a core contradiction inherent in feminist research of gender-related violence, including sexual violence, because participants have been traumatized: Research with survivors of violence must enact appropriate safeguarding measures to ensure their emotional wellbeing, yet in designing these safeguarding measures, researchers must also ensure that survivor participants can exert agency within the research process. These phenomena are often at odds as safeguarding—the work of protecting participants through limiting their exposure to upsetting stimuli—appears to circumscribe participant agency, or a participant’s ability to make informed choices for themselves that respond to and change the structures in which they are situated. Using part of my doctoral thesis research’s methodology, I detail the safeguarding measures I implemented for participants as well as highlight how and where I attempted to build in agential engagement for survivor participants, and whether, or how often, survivors took up these options. The article concludes by suggesting ways gender-related violence research more broadly can reflect on and continue to interrogate how researchers balance safeguarding requirements while enabling survivors to assert their agency in the research process.