{"id":2226,"date":"2025-05-06T09:04:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T07:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/?p=2226"},"modified":"2025-12-02T10:45:44","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T09:45:44","slug":"vulnerable-research-in-a-time-of-climate-change-and-coloniality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/?p=2226","title":{"rendered":"\u201cVulnerable Research\u201d in a Time of Climate Change and Coloniality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Charlotte Weatherill<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be by its death<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The role of the academy in empire and colonial violence is the main theme of Babel: An Arcane History<\/a>, a book by R. F. Kuang. Having wrestled with his own complicity in a system that also provides him with comforts his child-self couldn\u2019t have imagined, the book\u2019s protagonist Robin ends the novel by sacrificing himself to blow up Oxford University\u2019s ivory tower of Babel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

This book is set in the 19th<\/sup> century of a fantasy world, where things are only slightly different. It is silver that drives the colonial global economy<\/a>, rather than fossil fuels. However, Robin\u2019s conclusion, that the academy is irredeemable, and the only way to slow down the violence is to abandon the luxuries afforded to those who are allowed through its doors, is uncomfortably close to home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 21st<\/sup> century, there are two imperatives that require us to face the violence of our research practices: relentless coloniality, and climate change. These realities should be structuring the decisions made by researchers, instead they largely enter the academy as research problems. Questions are increasingly being asked about our role as researchers within this system. Q Manivannan recently posed the question, How do we make peace with knowledge in a time where scholarship itself seems cruel?<\/a> Rhys Crilley asked, Should we be writing at a time like this?<\/a> And in the same Special Issue, I have written my response<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vulnerable Research<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

My article Vulnerable research: Reflexivity, decolonisation, and climate politics<\/a> is written from my position as a climate politics researcher, based in the UK, and committed to feminist and decolonial principles. From this perspective, academia is complicit. From this perspective, research reproduces forms of harm that it purports to study. Our research questions are insufficient, our funding and ethical approval systems are not fit for purpose, and our research practices are actively harmful. Against this, I propose vulnerable research as an approach that makes new demands on researchers, which are uncomfortable but crucial. To this proposal, I bring my research into vulnerability, a concept that unlocks some of these difficult questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasingly, social science disciplines are recognising their implicated histories and working to change or \u2018decolonise\u2019 their methodologies. But I argue that more fundamental questions remain to be asked about a model, where supposedly \u2018invulnerable\u2019 European researchers travel the world collecting data on the vulnerable Other, especially in the context of climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my research, I write and read about colonial continuities \u2013 historicising climate change as a form of colonial violence<\/a>. From this perspective, participating in high emitting activities means doing harm. Knowingly doing harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My development of the vulnerable research approach arose from my personal concerns and frustrations, as a precarious academic being asked to prove myself according to metrics that are pushing me to engage in harmful practices. In my discipline at least, the best way to demonstrate international appeal is to fly to a North American conferences – for our careers it\u2019s \u2018fly or die<\/a>\u2019. At a moment where even privileged academics are facing detention at the border<\/a>, pushing back against this trend has potentially become easier. But assumptions about the invulnerable academic mean the argument still needs to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another demand is to obtain external funding. This also troubles me. I went through the process, applying for a six-figure early career grant. The project was one that excited me, working with researchers I admire a great deal. However, my bid was unsuccessful. In refusing to fly to Tuvalu myself and proposing to hire a Tuvaluan researcher for an extended period instead, the methodology was a concern for reviewers. It would have been easier and more defensible to write in flights and hotel stays, and to be there myself, doing the work. Again, there\u2019s an obvious problem here: How much of our research funding goes to airlines and hotel companies? These bids that take months to write, that take so much of our time, in practice work to funnel public money into the hands of environmentally disastrous private companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against fieldwork<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Here then, is the point. Me, repeatedly flying to Tuvalu , just to ask questions, in English, about climate vulnerability isn\u2019t problematic for only one reason, but three:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, from a feminist, reflexive position, a proposal based on my doing fieldwork in Tuvalu would have left intact the binary between the invulnerable researcher and vulnerable research subject<\/a>. It would have been me, a supposedly invulnerable<\/a> white woman from the UK, travelling to Tuvalu to get data from \u2018climate vulnerable\u2019 Islanders. This Mastery<\/a> model presents knowledge production as something that can be tightly controlled by us, as highly trained specialists. Debbie Lisle calls this the \u2018big lie<\/a>\u2019. If I had claimed that I was the person who should be doing the research, as the Grant wanted me to do, I would have been lying. Yet the academic model is exactly that \u2013 we all claim we are the right people to be doing the research, when what we mean is, we are the ones who can afford to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, from a decolonial position, more concerns come into the equation, due to the long history of extractive research<\/a> taking place in the Pacific and elsewhere. This sort of \u2018helicopter research<\/a>\u2019 that is done by Global North researchers in the Global South, with little local input, for the benefit of themselves and their institutions can be mitigated but not overcome. I would have gone to Tuvalu only through the authority of UK-based decision makers. I would not have had to even ask permission. What I would have been able to ask would have been constrained by my white British imagination and my biases. The research would have been fine at best. There\u2019s no defending this situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Third, from the standpoint of a climate researcher, the carbon cost of me doing this research would have been grotesque. The political economy and ecology of me flying repeatedly across the world would have done more harm than my findings could have possibly balanced. Obviously, there is more to climate change than flying, but this is a harm that academia perpetuates happily, a \u2018perk\u2019 of the job. Those who refuse it, have to defend it repeatedly, against the demands of internationalisation and cheap, fast travel in an era of competing logics of scarcity<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A vulnerable research approach that takes a political stand and rejects extractive research on these grounds and more is not a good career choice. However, it is a political imperative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is an uncomfortable time to be critiquing critical social science research. In many places, including the US<\/a>, the UK<\/a>, and New Zealand,<\/a> social sciences and the humanities are under attack. By the political right and by the rise of AI, whose proponents claim it can do what we do. Critical research is being particularly targeted. Yet, as a moment of crisis, this is also a moment of possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than defending academia in its current form, this is an opportunity to demand that it finally changes to reflect the world as it is now, rather than as it was. Embracing vulnerable research moves our work to being part of the global acts of resistance, against climate change, imperialism and genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note:<\/strong> This article gives the views of the author, not the position of the EADI Debating Development Blog or the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlotte Weatherill <\/strong>is Lecturer In Politics & International Studies at The Open University, UK<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image:<\/strong> Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Tower of Babel<\/a> on Wikimedia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charlotte Weatherill It must be by its death The role of the academy in empire and colonial violence is the main theme of Babel: An Arcane History, a book by R. F. Kuang. Having wrestled with his own complicity in a system that also provides him with comforts his child-self couldn\u2019t have imagined, the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “\u201cVulnerable Research\u201d in a Time of Climate Change and Coloniality”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,20,45],"class_list":["post-2226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinionpieces","tag-climate","tag-knowledge","tag-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Brueghel-tower-of-babel-broad.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/papI3v-zU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2226"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2441,"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2226\/revisions\/2441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.developmentresearch.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}