Doing Fieldwork as a Native Researcher in Authoritarian and Illiberal countries: Lessons and Challenges

Scholars conducting research in their native repressive or illiberal countries face a range of challenges that are distinct from those experienced by non-native scholars. These challenges include the burden of family history, gender, ethnic or religious identity, legal threats and administrative penalties specifically targeting native scholars, punishment by authorities and retribution on friends and family, as well as exploitation by non-native academics and institutions. While many recent publications have sought to underline the challenges of fieldwork under authoritarian settings (see Bank and Busse (2021), Krause and Szekely (2020), and Clark and Cavatorta (2018) with respect to the MENA region; Janenova (2019) and Driscoll (2021) for Central Asia; Bell (2013) for parts of the Caribbean; Laher, Fynn and Kramer (2019) for part of sub-Saharan Africa; Goode (2010, 2016) for Eastern Europe and Russia; and Reny (2016) and Wang 2019 for East Asia), these publications largely failed to examine the distinct difficulties confronted by native scholars or offer concrete strategies concerning how to deal with these challenges on the ground. This presentation builds on the testimonies of twenty native researchers who conducted research in sixteen repressive or illiberal countries to highlight the specific challenges they have experienced as scholars native to those countries. The second part of the presentation will present a number of strategies these scholars have developed to address the challenges they faced as scholars native to repressive/illiberal states conducting research in their home countries, including increased transparency with local authorities, relationship management with local gatekeepers, research and publication deferral, and the re-centering of the experiences of native scholars in fieldwork methodology training. Finally, this presentation will seek to amplify the voices of these native scholars by offering a number of recommendations to Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and editorial boards in Western institutions.