How ought one to conduct research in post-conflict spaces? The issue of ethical data collection becomes increasingly fraught when research takes place in settings that have experienced, or are currently experiencing, violent conflict. In addition to the usual considerations of human research subject protections – in particular, preserving the confidentiality of personally identifying information and minimising harm or the potential for harm to research subjects – researchers who study populations in settings that have experienced violence also must take into consideration the heightened vulnerability of these populations. For example, research participants may face grave threats to their physical security should their personally identifying information be exposed. Furthermore, participation in research may be triggering to participants who have experienced primary or secondary trauma as a result of the conflict. That is to say, these research participants face greater and different risks than research participants in other situations, and thus it is necessary to take special care when designing research in conflict and post-conflict spaces.

The Project

This project began as the subject of my doctoral dissertation, which aimed to assess secondary school students’ attitudes towards different ethnic groups within BiH. The 1992–95 Bosnian War ended with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DPA), also known as the General Framework Agreement for Peace. The DPA introduced consociational democracy to BiH and consequently restructured all of the country’s political institutions. The redesign of these political institutions included the administration of the Bosnian education system, and as a result, there are effectively three different models of primary and secondary education in BiH. My project was rooted in the suspicion that those different models of education would correspond with differences in students’ attitudes towards different ethnic groups.

BiH holds the distinction of being the most ethnically mixed of the former Yugoslavia’s six constituent republics. Unlike Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, BiH could not be claimed by any one dominant ethnic group. Rather, BiH prior to the war was a republic in which three main ethnoreligious groups – Bosniaks (who were typically Muslim), Croats (who were typically Catholic) and Serbs (who were typically Orthodox) – lived together, with none of these groups able to claim an absolute majority of the population.