Development news

Critical reflexivity in political ecology research

July 13, 2021
Photo: Unsplash / Thomas Kinto

Ten researchers in Rural development at SLU decided to come together to try to make a stop to rethink their research practices as activities were temporarily halted by the worldwide pandemic. 

The result is this freshly published paper, which aims to uncover “sanitized” aspects of research encounters, and theorize on the basis of anecdotes, feelings and informal discussions—“data” that is often left behind in fieldwork notes and personal diaries of researchers—, the ways in which research practices can hamper or can be conducive to emancipation in times of multiple interconnected health, political, social, and environmental crises. This is an attempt to open up a debate that could transform researchers, both as individual, but also as a collective body.