Political Reflexivity and the Ethics of Research in the Social Sciences
March 12, 2024 – 11am UK – 1pm Lebanon
Webinar
Event Description:
Violent contexts are not “normal” research settings; they involve abuses, power disparities, and collective histories of violence that researchers should be alert to. Researchers who are unreflexive about these risks cause harm in the form of objectifying people and context, normalizing violence, or silencing voices. Political reflexivity can equip researchers to better identify, understand and mitigate these harms, and where possible, challenge structures that do the marginalizing.
In this online talk, Mai Abu Moghli articulates political reflexivity through asking researchers to critically examine their positionality and privilege in relation to the geopolitics of the research setting, epistemic privilege of marginalized participants, and political implications of their work.
Practicing political reflexivity can help researchers situate their work along a “decoloniality continuum,” which includes complicity with the maintenance of violence, a hybridity approach that aims to understand and challenge the (colonial) underpinnings of violence by centering marginalized knowledge, and reparation or liberation, meaning redress and radical equality for marginalized peoples, ideas and histories.
This talk is a call for researchers to identify methods and paths to strengthen our understanding of political reflexivity, and to support efforts to decolonize knowledge.
This public talk is part of a thematic webinar series organized by the CLS Knowledge Collective.
Please register in advance for this webinar:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aVrTld9nS9qcX4AOoJTguQ
About the speaker:
Dr. Mai Abu Moghli, is a senior researcher at the Centre for Lebanese Studies (CLS) and a Co-PI on the British academy bilateral chair in education in conflict at the University of Cambridge and CLS. Mai works with teachers in Lebanon and her research focuses on teachers’ experiences in conflict and contexts of mass displacement, decolonising higher education and teachers’ activism.
