Date/Time
Date(s) - Wed 9 April
16:10 - 17:10
Location
Stout Research Centre Seminar Room, VUW
Join the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies for a talk that diagrams the unique challenges of researching a politicised pandemic.
Difficult Subjects—Researching the Perilous and Unknown seminar series
Presented by Violet Blue
No research is without risks. But high-stakes research goes next-level when the topic is a lightning rod for:
misinformation and disinformation
politically conflicting narratives
hostility and violent threats
potential for misuse
erasure by authoritarian regimes
medical gaslighting
systemic racism, and
greater than average risk to research subjects.
The heart of this seminar examines ongoing research for a forthcoming book documenting the first three years of Aotearoa’s Covid-19 response. This is set against a backdrop of global events and an increasingly volatile political and social landscape. This talk diagrams the unique challenges of researching a politicized pandemic that touches a boggling array of areas including:
history
health science
political science
media and communications
health equity
sociology
fieldwork
and more.
Those challenges require a researcher to also be a threat modeller to protect results, individuals, and at-risk populations, as well as the researcher herself. We’ll also look at countermeasures and steps taken to mitigate risks. Finally, we dive into examples of potential social, political, equity-based, and inclusive outcomes from taking on this high-risk project–and why we, as researchers, can’t walk away from high-risk storytelling.
Violet Blue is an author and journalist from San Francisco, who is currently a visiting scholar at the Stout Research Centre.