Researching in Challenging Environments: Methodological Innovation and Adaptation

Abstract

The fourth session of the SGGP online seminar series Doing Gender and Politics Research in Challenging Times and Environments explores how gender and politics researchers adapt their methodological strategies in contexts, where access to people, institutions and forms of evidence becomes politically or institutionally constrained. The three presentations approach this broader question through the cases of the gender research in the increasingly authoritarian Georgia; research on women’s voices in highly securitized and gatekept Hezbollah; and research on women, food security and informal governance in the post-colonial and post-socialist democracies of India and Albania. The presentations examine how addressing hostile gatekeepers, legal uncertainty regarding legitimate academic research, securitised research environments and institutional silences may reshape the research process and generate methodological innovation. These innovations include alternative routes to empirical material, including digital discourse, hybrid approach linking ethnography to computational text analysis, hybrid qualitative approaches, and continuous methodological flexibility to adapt to different contexts in comparative research Presenters: Kristine Margvelashvili (Ilia State University/University of Goettingen) Navigating Empirical Silence and Legal Grey Areas: Gender Research in Georgia Stephanie Dornscheiner-Elkink (University College Dublin) Listening Beyond the Frame: Ethnographic Fieldwork and NLP Analysis of Women's Voices in Hezbollah Sonia Rathore (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University) Politics of Access: Methodological Reflections on Gender and Politics Research in India and Albania

Title	Details
Navigating Empirical Silence and Legal Grey Areas: Gender Research in Georgia	View Paper Details
Listening Beyond the Frame: Ethnographic Fieldwork and NLP Analysis of Women's Voices in Hezbollah	View Paper Details
Politics of Access: Methodological Reflections on Gender and Politics Research in India and Albania	View Paper Details