This presentation reflects on the methodological, ethical, and positional challenges of conducting gender and politics research when knowledge becomes politically consequential. Drawing on my experiences of moving between academic research, policy analysis, and advocacy-oriented knowledge production, it examines how boundaries between knowledge production, advocacy, and political intervention become blurred when researching gender equality, authoritarianism, anti-gender mobilisation, and conflict. The presentation brings together experiences of researching democratic backsliding and anti-gender politics in Hungary with policy-oriented work on gender-based violence, human-rights violations, CEDAW monitoring in Ukraine, and crisis-response analysis in Gaza and Iran. These contexts involve very different forms and degrees of political violence, and I do not treat them as equivalent. Rather, I use them as four distinct settings in which related methodological questions become visible in different ways: how to produce and validate evidence under political contestation and urgency; how to navigate restricted access, uncertainty, confidentiality, and researcher safety; and how to balance academic independence with policy and advocacy demands when research may have immediate political consequences. Particular attention is paid to positionality and responsibility. What changes when researchers move between academic research, policy analysis, and advocacy-oriented knowledge production? How should decisions about dissemination, methodological rigour, and researcher safety be made when conventional research timelines are disrupted by political repression, conflict, or urgent policy needs? I also reflect on the emotional dimensions of sustained engagement with gender-based violence and political repression. The presentation argues for a more reflexive understanding of research impact in challenging environments, in which impact is not simply an outcome to maximise but an ethical and methodological relationship requiring negotiation. It concludes by considering collaborative practices of care, peer reflection, and cross-sectoral engagement as resources for sustaining critical gender research under pressure.
