We invite early-stage researchers to a participatory workshop facilitated by Rebecca Tapscott (University of York), who is currently running a research project on the politics of research ethics in the social sciences. In this 2 hours workshop, participants are invited to reflect on the ethical underpinnings of their research and discuss it openly with the group. The workshop targets early-stage researchers currently designing their research, writing their ethics review application, or planning their fieldwork.
The discussion will include:
- Why are you concerned with the ethics of your research? What are the main ethical challenges you foresee?
- What does ethical research mean to you? How do you intend to put it into practice?
- Who should get to decide what makes research ethical? What about when perspectives conflict? What are the stakes of this question?
- What strategies can we develop to stay ethically accountable to participants, the institution, and ourselves?
The workshop is limited to a maximum of 12 participants, please register to express your interest in participating by 19 March, 23.59 CET.
We will confirm participants’ registrations on Thursday 20 March.
In case you receive a confirmation but you won’t be able to attend, we will give the spot to people on the waiting list.
We will encourage participants to submit more specific questions or topics for discussion beforehand.
Rebecca Tapscott is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of York. She runs two major research projects, one on rebel to party political transitions (funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation’s Special Programme on State, Society and Security), and another on the politics of research ethics in the social sciences (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation's Ambizione program). She is the convenor of the Ethics Governance Network, and serves as an Associate Editor at Research Ethics, reviews editor for Civil Wars, and an editorial board member for International Studies Review. Her work has appeared in leading journals across comparative politics, international relations, African studies, and development studies, and she is the author of Arbitrary States: Social control and modern authoritarianism in Museveni's Uganda (OUP 2021), which was a finalist for the African Studies Associations' Bethwell A. Ogot book prize.