Reflections and recommendations on transitioning from pre‐ to post‐disaster research

Abstract

Occasionally, events occur that disrupt ongoing fieldwork, forcing researchers to deal with, and adapt to, new realities. In this paper, we discuss how the 2015 Nepal earthquake – which occurred while we were conducting fieldwork in one of the affected areas – forced us to reassess our research agenda, profoundly affected our relationship with the community we had been working in, and evoked challenging ethical questions in respect to our obligations to our research participants.

Recognition and ethical research practices: The role of community specialists

“…The toolkit is intended as a guide for decisions concerning right and wrong actions, acknowledging the complexity of human relations (Browne and Peek 2014). Reflexive approaches to ethics for disaster research are advocated by others as well (Edwards 2021; Ferreira, Buttell, and Cannon 2018; Mena and Hilhorst 2021; Mosurska 2021; Packenham et al 2017; Pardee et al 2018; Roxburgh et al 2021). However, to effectively navigate ethical dilemmas using Brown and Peek's (2014) ethical toolkit or other reflexive ethical approaches, researchers need to prioritize recognition.…”

“…Despite growing calls for more engagement of local researchers and community partners in post-disaster research (Barber and Haney 2016; Ferreira, Buttell, and Cannon 2018; Gaillard 2019; Gaillard and Peek 2019; Hakkim 2022; Louis-Charles et al 2020; Peek et al 2020a; Rohlman et al 2022; Roxburgh et al 2021; Wallerstein et al 2019; Wu et al 2022), there is often limited guidance regarding what these partnerships can look like and how they can be implemented practically. Moreover, limited work to date evaluates how these partnerships with local researchers influence the outcomes of long-term disaster research or offers advice on addressing potential challenges and tensions that may arise.…”

An empirically informed agent-based model of a Nepalese smallholder village

“…Earthquake scenarios. The first earthquake pathway is an effort to mimic the impact of the 2015 earthquakes which struck Namsa towards the end of the main fieldwork spell, shortly after the baseline data – which the initial model conditions are generated from – was collected [25] . The details of the scenario are based on the experiences reported by the villagers themselves during the follow up fieldwork in early 2017.…”

Aiming at a moving target: methodological reflections on the study of politics of citizen-centric governance in post-earthquake Nepal

“…More recently, scholars coming from other disciplinary backgrounds have shown how their immediate humanitarian concerns evoked by a specific disaster, their personal anxieties in witnessing the misguided response to the crisis, combined with their evolving scholarly hunches, have shaped their journey at documenting the struggles of local communities in promoting democratic response to disasters (Bell, 2013; Cornish, 2020; Curato, 2019). Reflexive story-telling and auto-ethnographic approaches are steadily gaining traction, highlighting multiple roles played by researchers in disaster context; from mobilising resources for communities they have intimate relations with, revisiting original line of research in response to the newer forms of vulnerabilities facing local communities, to documenting personal insecurities and discomforts of working in changing and challenging circumstances (Cohen, 2012; Lord and Murton, 2017; Roxburgh et al ., 2021; Xu, 2017). Others have sought to make a further methodological contribution through “dialogical learning”, revisiting mutual anxieties, hesitations and discomforts in observing a disaster in one's home country from a distance (Deterala and Villar, 2019).…”