(SILENT) VOICES

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Welcome to the (Silent) Voices blog. The blog posts are a continuation of the discussions initiated during the workshop on a variety of topics related to fieldwork and transnational intercultural collaborations.  The aim of this blog is to gain insight in the different aspects of research collaboration and to keep the conversation going. While in the first place providing a forum to the participants of the workshop, we also welcome guest contributions on topics that speak to the methods and ethics of research collaboration.

Emotional reflections in the practice of qualitative research

Field research in the contexts of conflicts, disasters, severe poverty, and marginalization entails being continually exposed to the daily life struggles and suffering of our research participants. Fieldwork in such environments involves emotional experiences on the part of respondents, but at the same time, such occurrences also impact the researchers. We discuss three instances in this piece: 1) how the emotions of the research participants impact qualitative research; 2) how researchers are affected by emotions during the practice; and 3) the strategies in handling such situations.