Researching issues related to conflict, violence, gendered and other inequalities, especially in places that are not the researcher's home country and which may still not be entirely stable, raises many challenges and questions, in practical but especially ethical terms. How to conduct research in a way that is meaningful, without exposing the participants or the researchers to safety risks or (re)traumatization. How to manage the insecurity and stress of working in an unknown and complex environment. How to work in contexts where working and travelling abroad as a single woman is not culturally expected and might raise questions. Many authors (see, for example, Guillemin and Gillam 2004; Fujii 2012; Theidon 2014; Cronin-Furman and Lake 2018; Schulz 2020; Schmidt 2021) have rightly pointed out that these questions are not frequently discussed in research training or academic publications, while university ethics boards tend to focus more on harms and risks to participants and researchers than on broader ethical research practice. This leaves new researchers to find their own solutions, while they could learn from the experiences that most researchers have had but have not written about.

Fortunately, more and more is being published about the research process and the ethics and practicalities of doing fieldwork, or in fact about why not to do fieldwork, or the need to change the mode of fieldwork (Boesten and Henry 2018; Irgil et al 2021; Krause 2021; Schulz and Kreft 2021; Ginty, Brett and Vogel 2021). This appendix contributes to these emerging debates on the ethics of researching conflict. It deals with some of the silenced parts of research that can produce real doubts, tensions and insecurities for researchers. It combines a practical checklist (Table A.1) that lists the key topics and questions to think about with ethical and methodological reflections based on my own research and suggestions on how to overcome these doubts and tensions. The checklist can thus serve as a tool for students, researchers and practitioners, and as a contribution to debates on methods and fieldwork. After the actual checklist, the appendix describes in more detail its different thematic areas, starting with the practical ethical issues which emerge in research, continuing with more fundamental, underlying ethical questions that researchers deal with, to conclude with ethical challenges which might arise when research is finished.