Conclusion

Researchers who carry out fieldwork in dangerous contexts such as in modern post-war zones face some specific risks, which expose them to increased levels of risks. The inability to avoid these risks has called for proactive risk management, where acknowledging and addressing the risks researchers face becomes an inherent part of the research process. The proactive risk management process is a tripartite relationship, with boundaries between institutional actors such as university ethics committees, individual researchers and principal investigators/ supervisors, that acts as the bridge between the institution and individual researchers. The boundaries in this tri-part relationship change from being implicit, hypothetical and timeless in the pre-fieldwork period to becoming implicit, real and time defined during fieldwork. As a result, proactive risk management needs to be a two-way relationship where information flow between the institution and individual researchers is built upon a partnership to facilitate risk-informed decision-making on an ongoing basis.
The contribution of researchers, principal investigators/ supervisors and the ethics committee in building the partnership is mostly dependent on negotiations and at first, establishing the hypothetical boundary is somewhat difficult. This is because of the impossibility of having perfect information and the possibility of any boundary, being moved to either side on an ongoing basis. This raise the fundamental question as to whether the boundary is placed in the right place – that is, has everyone involved in the research project fully considered the data and information and consulted with experts when making decisions. The frequent lack of in-depth risk management by institutions that are heavily dependent on researchers to provide data and information in building a knowledge base has forced researchers to fend for themselves at critical times without adequate support in place. This has pushed individual researchers to depend on their informal network, such as family and friends when things go wrong (Kenyon & Hawker, 1999). Regular supervision could be helpful to some extent, although sometimes this may be inadequate. However, there are advantages in the researcher bearing some responsibility when away from the institutional frameworks in some instances. For example, nominating a point person in the UK during fieldwork would have been counterproductive and family and friends maybe more appropriate. The intervention by institutions to assure researcher safety during fieldwork may require them to act at the highest levels; for example, interventions through diplomatic channels may create new challenges to researchers who are already in highly volatile post-war zones. As such, there are limitations to institutional interventions when it comes to assuring researcher safety and merits in individual responsibility.
The fieldwork risks posed to researchers have become normalised and researchers are expected to accept some form and degree of risk while doing fieldwork. However, recent post-war zones have become extremely violent and researchers working in these areas face increased levels of risk, which could be life-threatening. The importance of anticipating the occurrence of negative events and proactively planning for such scenarios to ensure researcher safety cannot be stressed enough when conducting fieldwork in post-war zones. However, the fine details of the plan need not necessarily be in writing. This is due to the peril of the risk assessment plan falling into the hands of other parties, which then makes the plan ineffective and may compromise the whole research process. Therefore, familiarising oneself with the risk management plan and memorising possible actions to meet the demands of possible scenarios will avoid the need to carry a documented risk management plan during fieldwork. As Kovats-Bernat (2002) explains when working in dangerous fields,