As documented by Griffin and Leibetseder (2019), although large research funders based in the North (e.g. the European Commission) increasingly require that scholars conduct transnational studies, the literature on what this means for seeking ethics approval in the case of qualitative approaches remains scant. Relatedly, in practice ethics approval remains a largely national phenomenon, driven by the logics of quantitative research, that fails to take into account the geopolitics of conducting research across North and South borders. This state of affairs raises significant questions for scholars who adopt a participatory research ethos. Which procedures should we used in order to identify and recruit research participants? How should we deal with the standard definitions of 'vulnerability' and 'incidental findings' typically adopted by ethics evaluation boards (and challenge them if so required)? Which approaches to social media data would bring us closer to conducting critical research with others rather than upon others? (Luka and Millette, 2018) How could we move from automatically offering anonymisation to participants as a precaution to discussing with them whether and why they may want or need to be anonymous or have their voices recognized? (Sinha and Back, 2016).

Drawing on lessons learnt from seeking ethics approval for a qualitative multi-method project funded by the European Commission to conduct research about everyday communicative activism in a country of the so-called global South, this paper: a) maps some of the challenges raised by ethics requirements derived from an error-avoidance, philo-quantitative model keen on a priori decisions; b) identifies biases against the South raised in ethical approval requirements that hinder transnational collaboration; and c) argues for a contextual and processual approach to ethics (Markham, 2018) that foregrounds dialogue between researcher and participants, and between researchers in the North and the South, in order to democratize methodologies.

References

Griffin, G. and Leibetseder, D. (2019) "'Only Applies to Research Conducted in Sweden...': Dilemmas in Gaining Ethics Approval in Transnational Qualitative Research" in International Journal of Qualitative Methods, Volume 18: 1–10. DOI: 10.1177/1609406919869444

Luka, M.E. & Millette, M. (2019) "(Re)framing Big Data: Activating Situated Knowledges and a Feminist Ethics of Care in Social Media Research" in Social Media + Society, January-March 2018: 1–10. DOI: 10.1177/20563051187682

Markham, A. (2018) "Ethics as Impact—Moving From Error-Avoidance and Concept Driven Models to a Future-Oriented Approach" in Social Media + Society, July-September, 1–11. DOI: 10.1177/2056305118784504 

Sinha, S. and Back, L. (2013) "Making methods sociable: dialogue, authorship and ethics in qualitative research" in Qualitative Research, 14(4): 473-87. DOI: 10.1177/1468794113490717