Conducting research with people on socially painful issues: "No one came to help any one here, it seemed, this was just a professor training her students [...] ."

 GEOG 2013 - A very important read and a reminder-to-self as I conduct research in informal settlements in Suva, Fiji.

Palestinian Refugees are not at your service (Nayel, 2013) 

Ten points to consider when pursuing research in human geography, particularly with people who might be deemed 'vulnerable':

1. People's stories and life experiences are personal, sensitive, sometimes urgent, and you have to be prepared to share resources, leverage your privilege, and make a difference. 

2. You are doing research with a purpose and if you are going to connect a reader eventually to this case-study, you need to connect and be connected yourself.

3. Please do your research before going in to the field - READ!

Do not ask things that are already well-known.

4. Get a sense of the resources available in the participants' area, so you can direct and lead them to get help that you may not be able to provide. You can do this online, through key-informant interviews before-hand, and through other informational interviews with 'authorities' BEFORE doing fieldwork with your participants.

5. Remember their (your participants') time is more important than your time. Be grateful and show your gratitude.

6. Research is an invasion of privacy and space - you need to consider ways of giving privacy and allowing space while you are with someone, whether you are in their home or not.

7. If you cannot help or unwilling or unable to be connected to people and issues, tell people frankly at the outset that they will get no benefit from this interview AND they should not feel they have to answer anything you ask - there is no obligation or compulsion. In my research, even though they had agreed, and I had traveled out of my way to meet them, some thanked me and left me holding blank questionnaires when they understood they did not have to participate. While I was disappointed, I also felt happy that acted in their interest and that my research ethos allowed them that freedom not to participate. If they choose to participate, for their sake, at various points, ask if they need to take a break, do something while you interview, or if they would like to stop for today, or stop altogether.

8. Give people the right to be people (not research subjects or merely participants), make choices, and express their agency, even if it's not the narrow focus of your research.

9. Your role in the research doesn't end at the completion of the interviews - quickly compile your data to see trends, and highlight major issues e.g. access to health, education, water and sanitation - see how you can mobilize resources you have to improve things in the short term since, as you know, research takes months and years to get into the public domain. This will allow you to bridge the divide between people's immediate needs and the typical duration of a study.

10. You will leave the field, but you must stay connected. This means being actively involved in the struggles of your participants, even when you are not being funded for research and you are doing other things in other places.

In our GEOG 2013 methodologies and research conduct classes, we talk about "feeling used" by researchers. This is a quintessential example you should heed. Please use the comment section to add more advice for other human geographers, or to offer your own examples of essential practices from the field.

Finally, the Palestinian exile and generations growing up in deadly circumstances, displaced from their homelands, is one of the most important social, political, economic, and geographical issues of our time. Please don't ignore the underlying issues of the multiple and interlocking supremacies and forms of oppression that are the foundation of this story.