Re-Thinking Exposure to Trauma and Self-Care in Fieldwork-Based Social Research: Introduction to the Special Issue

ABSTRACT

The introduction to the special issue starts with a literature review with particular focus on distinguishing between the key terms and concepts of burnout, compassion and empathy fatigue. By looking at past studies, the author notes that vicarious trauma, secondary trauma, indirect trauma and secondary traumatic stress disorder are often used by working professionals and interchangeably; however the use of the concepts in the field-based social science research needs methodological adjustments and theoretical reconsideration. In the second part, she reflects on the evidence collected during the workshop ‘The Cost of Bearing Witness: Secondary Trauma and Self-Care in Field-Based Social Research’ which was held at the University of Turku, Finland, in October 2018. During the workshop participating researchers and practitioners discussed some of the most striking obstacles and challenges of the research work in the traumatized settings. On the basis of the ideas collected and shared, the authors synthetize some concrete suggestions for preventive and self-care techniques and ways to enhance overall the institutional and systematic support available to researchers exposed to trauma.

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KEYWORDS:

• Field-research
• methodology
• vicarious trauma
• self-care

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nena Močnik

Nena Močnik is a postdoctoral researcher at Turku Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Turku, Finland. She was awarded Bank of Montreal Award in Women’s Studies (University of Ottawa, 2018) and recipient of several fellowships including EnTe Fellowship (New Europe College, Bucharest, 2016–2017), ICNC-Fletcher Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict (Tufts University, 2016) Brown International Advanced Research Institute Fellowship (Brown University, 2015) and Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship (University of Southern California, 2014). She is the author of Sexuality after War Rape: From Narrative to Embodied Research (2017) and War-related Sexual Violence and Trauma Transmission: Reconciliation and Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Settings (2020). She is community theatre practitioner in the field of social justice and anti-discrimination; an external expert at EUROCLIO – Re-Think Project and a lead coordinator of the European Comission project Never Again Teaching Transmission of Trauma and Remembrance through Experiential Learning.