When fieldwork falls apart: Navigating disruption from political turmoil in research

摘要

For many researchers, conducting fieldwork can often form a significant component of data collection. With a rich history across many disciplines, fieldwork has received significant reflexive examination, notably around when it is conducted in dangerous areas or used for researching high-risk situations. Less attended to, however, are the equally disruptive but less dangerous situations that researchers can face, such as conducting fieldwork during political turmoil. The aim of this paper is to explore the impact of political turmoil on fieldwork, and reflectively examine both the consequences of this and possible ways of mitigation. Through examining fieldwork notes and journals, the findings identified that despite political turmoil's significant disruption on processes of data collection, the researcher utilised notions of flexible positionalities and developed adaptive methodologies to circumvent these challenges. The paper provides new insights for managing the impact of disruption on fieldwork from political turmoil and encourages the continuation of publications focusing on reflective fieldwork accounts.