Short Methods Note: Operationalising Agency and Uncertainty in a Peace and Conflict Studies Research Project - Sri Lanka

Abstract

Introduction-Researching questions of peace with justice, within environments that restrain researcher agency, and which evoke uncertainty, requires the adoption of long-term perspectives and a good dose of patience. From the restrictions placed upon the researcher by external institutional structures to the relationships established between researcher and participants during data collection, agency and uncertainty remain factors in post-positivist scientific projects. Critical and contemplative analysis of the data, and importantly of the structures, within which knowledge is acquired as well as a preparedness for processual adjustments over time, help to underpin research trajectories. In my own experience, these factors demand not only a cautious restraint, by way of the researcher's own framing of process, but elevated commitments to the principle of 'do no harm', the recognition of the positionality between researcher and participants, the acknowledgement and mitigation of bias and action to promote researcher and participant agency. Researchers themselves should acknowledge the limits by which their methodologies are constrained; and how, by modifying methods and observing limits, transparency and accountability are enhanced, participation and subjectivity substantiated, and bias and harm mitigated.