Of Assistants and Researchers: Vulnerability during Fieldwork on the Colombian Conflict

As field researchers have increasingly explored the methodological ‘backstage’ of their fieldwork, the importance of the relationship between the researcher and research assistant has come to fore. While the literature has discussed dynamics of gender, coloniality, and exploitation oftentimes inherent to such work arrangements, less has been written about how the relation affects and is affected by situations of vulnerability in the field. In this paper, a research assistant and a researcher come together to address this gap, critically analysing their relationship based on a joint fieldwork experience on the Colombian conflict carried out in 2021. Going beyond the vulnerabilities of the individual persons, we argue that the relation between researcher and research assistant should be conceived as being entangled in situations of vulnerability. To that end, we focus on acceptance in the field and its consequences for the researcher-assistant relation; dynamics of gender, hierarchy, and positionality both within the researcher-assistant relationship and in a hyper-masculine field site; and the support and security that the researcher and assistant depend on or can provide each other with during fieldwork. We show that a conceptualisation of the researcher-assistant relationship as vulnerable allows us to consider the ethics arising from such a work relationship.