Читать книгу Researching in the Age of COVID-19 Vol 2 - Группа авторов - Страница 11

Researcher safety priorities prior to the pandemic included a growing understanding of the need to provide health and safety training to researchers (Boynton, 2016; Tolich et al., 2020); with a particular focus on lone working (Health and Safety Executive, 2020), buildings and materials (Kuespert, 2016; Stoaks, 2019), travel and fieldwork (Williams et al., 1992), researching ‘sensitive issues’ (Cornejo et al., 2019; Fenge et al., 2019) and studies during humanitarian disasters or conflict (Sluka, 2020), possibly with participants or communities stereotypically deemed ‘dangerous’ (Kendra and George, 2001; Parker and O’Reilly, 2013). All of these are important, but risk stigmatizing particular communities including ethnic minorities, poor, mentally unwell, substance users or other marginalized groups (Boynton, 2016) while suggesting other people, places (including online spaces) or topics are ‘safe’ (Boynton, 2016; Chiswell and Wheeler, 2016; Morgan and Pink, 2017; Pritchard, 2019; DeGroot and Carmack, 2020). When danger is located ‘out there’ (Wood, 1999) the everyday toxicity and threats from academia of racism (Ahmed, 2012; Bhopal, 2019; Sian, 2019), colonialism (Kuokkanen, 2008), sexism (Savigny, 2014), lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning plus (LGBTQ+) phobia (Kneale and Becares, 2020), classism (Atherton and Mazhari, 2019), ableism (D’Evelyn et al., 2018) and these intersections can render methodologies risky or unfit for purpose and pose significant risks to students, researchers, participants and other academic staff. Bullying, harassment and abuse within academia (Boynton, 2016, 2020a), pressure to publish, competition, funding, precarity and exploitation all create a climate where researching is difficult and researchers made unwelcome, unsafe or unwell (Newson and Polster, 2019; Passaretta et al., 2019; Boynton, 2020a). In the past few years, a dramatic increase in reported mental distress has been observed among academic students and staff (Koch, 2018; Morrish, 2019; Universities and Colleges Union, 2019) with patchy and often inadequate responses offered (Morrish, 2019; Boynton, 2020a).