The reflective research diary: a tool for more ethical and engaged disaster research

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to highlight how keeping a reflective research journal can help disaster researchers to work in a more ethical and engaged way.Design/methodology/approachThe author analyses the reflective research diary to illustrate how keeping it has helped the author, a white, non-Indigenous researcher, navigate British academia whilst trying to plan a collaborative project with Indigenous peoples during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.FindingsThe author draws out some of the ways that academic institutions can undermine ethical research practice through opaque structures and by incentivising pressuring early-career researchers (ECRs) to conduct fieldwork in dangerous times. The author demonstrates ways the rpeers and author have tried to push against these structures, noting that this is not always possible and that their efforts are always limited without institutional support or change.Originality/valueMany ECRs and PhD students have written reflective accounts about the ethical challenges they have faced during fieldwork. In this article, the author adds to this by building on literature in disaster studies and positing how ethical and engaged research can be conducted within British (colonial) institutions.

Recognition and ethical research practices: The role of community specialists

“…For example, using a reflexive research diary, Mosurska (2021) details how funder guidelines prevented her from being able to use project funding to hire locally based researchers, limiting her ability to pursue a collaborative research process. Mosurska (2021) also reflects on how short graduate program timelines discourage research practices that lead to ethical methodological decisions because of the prolonged timelines associated with those activities. For example, learning about the community context and building trust to work directly with community stakeholders.…”

“…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.…”

“…Other institutional barriers to conducting ethical long-term disaster research that prioritizes recognition include rigid funding mechanisms for researchers. For example, using a reflexive research diary, Mosurska (2021) details how funder guidelines prevented her from being able to use project funding to hire locally based researchers, limiting her ability to pursue a collaborative research process. Mosurska (2021) also reflects on how short graduate program timelines discourage research practices that lead to ethical methodological decisions because of the prolonged timelines associated with those activities.…”

Co-production revisited: from knowledge plurality to action for disaster risk reduction

“…The priority on high-impact journal publications as a performance measure further marginalizes local researchers for whom publishing processes are costly and complex and whose language and writing may differ from dominant Western academic norms. Furthermore, the pressures by academic institutions to produce a robust research output can also perpetuate the structures of oppression in researchers' engagement with Indigenous peoples (Mosurska, 2022).…”

Why are you in disaster studies? Liberating future scholars from oppressive disaster science

“…In May 2023, I started to question my role as “professor” or “oppressor” and consequently “why I am in disaster studies”, when a Ph.D. student I supervised emailed me, stating he/she was facing mental health issues and was blocked by the obligation of writing an article in English for this special issue on liberating disaster studies. What happened with this Ph.D. student made me think about my role in reproducing the logic of “publish or perish.” (Jordão, 2019; Mosurska, 2022), the oppressive discourses and practices I have been involved in disaster studies, and how I can liberate myself and students from some of them, such as the pressure of publishing in English, which is a prerequisite for defending a dissertation at the graduate program where I teach.…”