Virtual qualitative inquiry: tensions of research in post-conflict Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, in-person data collection methods have been considerably hampered by requirements for social distancing and safety. Consequently, academic inquiry has shifted largely to virtual means, leading to the considerable growth of virtual qualitative research. Conducting virtual research in post-conflict contexts, such as Sri Lanka, with increased state surveillance, security concerns, and censorship presents researchers with additional tensions, particularly during a pandemic. Limited literature, however, has grappled with these unique situations. This paper addresses this gap by reflecting on the process of conducting virtual qualitative research through a case study of faculty members in peace education instruction at Sri Lankan universities. The study drew on semi-structured interviews (n = 32), documentary evidence, and memos created during the data collection and analysis stages. This paper discusses the challenges and complexities of conducting virtual research within the intersections of peace education, post-conflict legacies, ethical dimensions, and positionality dimensions, which are interwoven, adding several layers of considerations in this context. Furthermore, the paper chronicles the key tensions faced: surveillance and consent, residual embodiments, and the choices made in response to navigate them. This paper concludes with a discussion around these tensions and aims to expand the literary discourse beyond the technological aspects of conducting virtual research. The study highlights the need for future research into residual embodiments, ethical and micro-ethical issues, and practical challenges in virtual research in conflict-affected contexts, suggesting that institutions should provide researchers with training to address these complexities and support robust knowledge co-creation.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-Conflict legacies
• virtual qualitative research
• peace education
• residual embodiments
• surveillance and consent

Introduction

After the Cold War, there has been a growing interest in conducting research in post-conflict contexts. Scholars have examined various issues, including transitional justice, peacebuilding, reintegration of ex-combatants, and conflict transformation (Galtung 1998; Lamb 2011; Lederach 2003; Macdonald 2013). However, conducting research in post-conflict contexts poses several challenges that are intertwined, such as access, quality of data, risks to both researchers and participants, positionality, ethics, and the implications of the knowledge produced. The COVID-19 pandemic has added further layers of complexity and challenges to the data collection process, especially with researchers having to shift to virtual methods. This paper draws on my reflections on researching peace education within higher education institutions in 2021, and examines the resulting intersecting tensions experienced during virtual research in post-conflict Sri Lanka.

In this paper, key elements of this virtual qualitative study are identified, namely, researcher positionality, ethics, and virtual methods, emphasising, the insider/outsider status of researchers and their hybrid positionalities during qualitative inquiry. Furthermore, the nature, benefits, limitations, and ethical considerations of virtual research methods are explored. Then the paper shifts focus on the research landscape, with a discussion around the root causes and legacies of the Sri Lankan conflict, elements which led to a heightened culture of state surveillance and security concerns, stifling the efforts to foster long-term peace through education, particularly in the higher education space. These elements combined to create unique tensions during the data collection stage and raised the question, ‘How can I protect every participant throughout the study?’

This paper addresses this practical question through the navigation of two tensions, residual embodiments and surveillance and consent, which could arise in other virtual research in post-conflict contexts, and expands the literature beyond the technological aspects of conducting virtual research. This paper emphasises the need for further research into residual embodiments, ethics, and practical challenges in virtual research, particularly in conflict-affected contexts. Moreover, the study recommends institutions to provide training to researchers, develop tailored approaches to address the mismatch of technological capabilities, and support robust knowledge co-creation.

Researcher positionality and ethics in qualitative research

Positionality shifts and shapes qualitative research by challenging the notion that researchers are objective observers. Sands, Bourjolly, and Roer-Strier (2007) describe researchers’ positionality as their social status, their personal experiences, and their conceptual outlooks, and how these impact their work. Positionality has typically been described in terms of insider and outsider status, which can be based on the similar or differing traits that separate ‘the researcher’ and ‘the researched’. These traits denote aspects such as the researcher’s age, ethnicity, gender, social status, citizenship, and scholastic traditions (Carling, Erdal, and Ezzati 2014; Kalinga 2019).

According to Aoki (1996), insiders and outsiders are binary concepts. Researchers considered as insiders are members of ‘particular groups and collectives, or residents of certain social states; outsiders are those who are not members’ (Merton 1972). Insiders share traits with the research participants, such as language, ethnicity, and gender, whereas outsiders could have contrasting traits with the research participants. Positioning of researchers as insiders or outsiders (Hellawell 2006) are important, as researchers considered as insiders gain privileged access and participate in knowledge co-creation (Chaudhry 2018).

In contrast, participants may be reluctant to share their experiences because researchers viewed as outsiders lack common points of reference and knowledge (Dwyer and Buckle 2009). This binary representation of insider and outsider status is important. However, a researcher might move within this binary or spectrum during the research process. In this sense, it is difficult to regard the researcher entirely as a ‘culturally embedded, subjective insider’ or an ‘objective, detached outsider’ (Crossley, Lore, and McNess 2016; Griffith 1998). This results in the researcher displaying hybrid positions within the spectrum of insider-outsider positionality (Carling, Erdal, and Ezzati 2014). As researcher engagement with the participants and contexts increases over time, the researchers could move from being explicit outsiders to honorary insiders (Baser and Toivanen 2017; Bilgen, Nasir, and Schoneberg 2021; Carling, Erdal, and Ezzati 2014). In reflecting on my own researcher positionality, I have a hybrid insider-outsider status.

According to Carling, Erdal, and Ezzati (2014), hybrid insider-outsider status is one where the researcher shares insider traits as well as traits considered an outsider by the participants. Researchers born in the Global South, educated in, and spending a long time in the Global North (and vice versa) are considered to have hybrid insider-outsider positions within the spectrum. For example, I was born in Sri Lanka to parents of mixed ethnicities. My primary and secondary education was at a local school, conducted in the Sinhala and English language streams; these are traits I shared with the research participants in Sri Lanka, which contributed to my insider status. Many people left Sri Lanka as refugees for education, and others, like myself, moved overseas as residents, which, I acknowledge, forms part of my ‘privilege’ of living in Australia for more than ten years, working, and pursuing higher education, traits that contributed to my outsider status. This paper will later explore this hybrid insider-outsider status and the shifting positionality within the tension of residual embodiments. Together with positionality, ethical considerations play an important role for researchers in post-conflict settings such as Sri Lanka, especially when engaging in sensitive discussions about conflict-related topics with ethnically diverse participants and students. In qualitative research, ethics play a critical role in protecting researchers and participants (Bryman 2016). The principle of ‘do no harm’ directs researchers to minimise the risk to participants and to prioritise their well-being (Beauchamp and Childress 2001). Additionally, the ideal of ‘doing good’ encourages researchers to positively impact participants and communities. These principles guide researchers to consider the potential consequences of their actions and to consider the well-being of participants, especially in post-conflict and surveillance environments. Researchers, either in-person or virtually, must consider various ethical issues, including voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, and potential harm. Johnson and Christensen (2008), suggests that the important ethical issue of informed consent is required by participants before their involvement. In this study, participants were informed of the purpose, scope, risks, and benefits of the research project and that their involvement was voluntary, with the right to withdraw at any time. Additionally, this study retained participant anonymity in all publications, and all personal data and information collected were kept secure and confidential, which are important factors in gaining participants’ trust.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, I had to change the research design with ethics committee approval. The initial research design included interviews, observations, and documentary evidence. The shift to virtual research involved removing observation protocols, conducting virtual interviews, and collecting documentary evidence. The ethical considerations for this redesign included informed consent, mitigating participants’ risks, maintaining anonymity, and confidentiality. Due to the redesign, one requirement of the ethics committee was to gain electronic (written) consent. This instruction could have been provided to maintain consistency and research rigour. Conversely, obtaining written consent from participants could be viewed as a rigid procedure. For example, verbal consent could have been included for greater flexibility, mitigating the risk to research participants. However, being an insider, I understood the disparate technological capabilities of participants, and to ensure accessibility and fairness, the ethics committee permitted recording on multiple audio devices, with explicit written consent, when required. Tensions arising around ethics and virtual research methods will be further examined in the section surveillance and consent.

Virtual qualitative methods

Data collection through virtual methods was increasingly used before the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing literature suggests that, in most cases, data collection is through virtual interviews with related technology, such as video conferencing, email, and chat (Adom, Osei, and Adu-Agyem 2020; Archibald et al. 2019), which benefit researchers in several ways. First, there are more opportunities for recruitment, with accessibility and inclusivity for participants in remote or inaccessible locations and those with mobility impairments (Pegg, Karl, and Harpur 2021; Williams et al. 2018). In this study, virtual research methods helped expand the geographic reach from one public university in the capital and central province to twelve public universities out of fifteen in Sri Lanka, with 32 participants (Eiguren et al. 2021; Keen, Lomeli-Rodriguez, and Williams 2022). Additionally, video-calling technology innovations with the built-in recording features of Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Skype allow greater efficiencies for researchers to record both audio and video with participants’ consent, including improved audio capture, automatic transcription, and captioning (Keen, Lomeli-Rodriguez, and Williams 2022). Moreover, by not travelling to an institution or meeting location, the convenience of scheduling interviews from home allows participants to schedule interviews around tighter timetable gaps or reschedule at short notice (Keen, Lomeli-Rodriguez, and Williams 2022). In this study, most interviews were conducted in participants’ ‘home offices’ and lasted an average of 60 min, encouraging a more natural conversational style (Nehls, Smith, and Schneider 2015), which enhanced online rapport (Archibald et al. 2019; Deakin and Wakefield 2013; Sy et al. 2020), resulting in a more detailed thematic analysis (Keen, Lomeli-Rodriguez, and Williams 2022; Roberts, Pavlakis, and Richards 2021).

Studies on the limitations of virtual research methods focus on how new virtual technologies require greater ethical scrutiny (Salmons 2016). Some scholars argue that most ethical concerns are similar to those found in face-to-face research (Lobe, Morgan, and Hoffman 2020), while others have raised concerns about risks to participants, data confidentiality, and interview safety (Roberts, Pavlakis, and Richards 2021; Sy et al. 2020). Additionally, researchers may become less familiar with their data by using automatic transcription, as deciphering interviews support their ability to absorb their content. Moreover, in the absence of in-person visits to the contexts under investigation, researchers should explore these regions using wider literature, news media, talks, documentaries, interactive virtual maps, and alternative ways to embed themselves in a culture (Roberts, Pavlakis, and Richards 2021). However, these methods could only shed limited light on the culture and context of the research site. Nevertheless, there is a gap around ethics, positionality, and virtual methodological considerations to guide researchers (Roberts, Pavlakis, and Richards 2021). In this study, pivoting to a virtual research approach required an internal ethics amendment and approval. Despite the swift amendment process, the virtual research task ahead was complex.

Conducting research in conflict-affected settings

A post-conflict context has unique aspects that impact researchers and participants, adding further layers of complexity to ethics, positionality, and research methods. Conducting in-person research in conflict and post-conflict contexts provides many challenges for the researcher. Scholars emphasise that academic training does not prepare researchers well for field research, particularly in conflict zones (Clark 2006; Cohen and Arieli 2011; Wood 2006). There are a range of influences that exacerbate the methodological challenges, such as logistics, political division, volatility, and possible trauma, harm, or fear of being killed by the presence of armed groups and military actors (Nordstrom and Robben 1995; Wood 2006). Scholarship in post-conflict contexts suggests that researchers face specific methodological challenges, such as how they cope with stress and uncertainty, along with ethical issues (Angucia, Zeelen, and De Jong 2010; Carpenter 2012; Silkin and Hendrie 1997). Furthermore, the access to participants and the quality of data could impact the production of new knowledge (Roll and Swenson 2020). In this study, there was limited institutional training provided, especially on how to contend with virtual methods, approach the post-conflict context, deal with sensitive subject matters, and the emotional aspects arising from the research. As the study explores peace education in higher education, there are a range of unique aspects of post-conflict Sri Lanka that influenced the study's ethical frameworks, positionality, and research methods. As a result, I was uncertain and concerned about conducting research in a contextually appropriate manner. The next few sections will illustrate aspects of Sri Lanka’s troubled history and its continuing legacies in the post-conflict context, and how conducting research in this context, then, is necessarily complex.

Research landscape: conflict’s legacies and promoting peace in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is a diverse island, comprising four main ethnic groups: (a) Sinhalese (75%); (b) Sri Lankan Tamil (11%); (c) Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka (4%); and Sri Lankan Muslims (9%) (Department of Census and Statistics Sri Lanka 2015). This diversity has been exploited by successive governments for their political gain through divisive policies (Bopage 2017). Since independence from Britain in 1948, these divisive policies in Sri Lanka have resulted in ongoing struggles with violence and conflict between communities. One such divisive policy is the Sinhala Only Act (1956), which replaced English with Sinhala as the official language of the public sector, including education and health, preventing ethnic minorities (including Tamils) from gaining employment in these sectors (Betts and Higgins 2017). The act created long-term resentment and hostilities that fuelled intermittent violence and culminated in the riots of 1983. These riots led to the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, causing increased violence, widespread loss of life, and political, economic, and social instability (Betts and Higgins 2017). The conflict was a power struggle between the rival ethno-nationalisms of the Sinhalese-led administration and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) – a secessionist rebel group pursuing a Tamil homeland in the northern parts of Sri Lanka (Lopes-Cardoso and Hoeks 2015). The conflict concluded brutally in May 2009. The Sinhalese-led government forces defeated the LTTE’s struggle, with considerable loss of life and claims of war crimes committed by both sides. These war crimes have not been investigated, and no party has yet faced justice (Betts and Higgins 2017). In total, it is estimated that nearly 100,000 people lost their lives, including over 50,000 soldiers and combatants (United Nations 2012).

Post-conflict legacies: surveillance, security and censorship

Despite the ‘official’ end to the conflict era in Sri Lanka, direct and structural violence (Galtung and Fischer 2013) or the legacies of the conflict continue. This violence is directed towards ethnic and religious minorities – Tamils, Muslims, and Christians – and activists and opponents of the government from the Sinhala Buddhist community. As a researcher within a post-conflict context, it is important to consider the continuing direct and structural violence in Sri Lanka, such as state surveillance, security, and censorship, which has extended to the higher education space in Sri Lanka; some of these examples will be discussed in the next section.

Since 2019, Gotabhaya Rajapakse has governed with increased militarisation, suppression of dissent, and an ethno-nationalistic brand of politics (Ellis-Petersen 2019). His government and the current Ranil Wickramasinghe administration have increased state surveillance, a key legacy of the conflict. This has resulted in rapid militarisation in many spheres of civil administration – health, education, and telecommunications. For example, in 2019, the Information and Technology Agency (ICTA), which has sophisticated surveillance and intelligence-gathering technologies, was brought under the Ministry of Defence for purported national security. Moreover, Sri Lanka Telecommunications Act (1991, S53, S54) enables a telecommunications officer to intercept personal communications under the direction of a minister without a court order, heightening fears about privacy and surveillance. In the past, this Act has been regularly and arbitrarily used to stop dissent, block websites, intimidate, and create fear amongst opponents (Wickrematunge 2018). In relation to the privacy of personal information, no specific constitutional or legislative protection exists in Sri Lanka, leading to personal information being shared indiscreetly (Centre for Policy Alternatives 2020). Furthermore, there is a growing influence of the military in the education sector, ranging from constructing schools to conducting military drill-style tertiary leadership training (Sri Lanka Campaign 2020), taking senior leadership roles at universities, and attempting to integrate military-based education policies within higher education (Ariyarathne 2021). This creep in militarisation has created a surveillance culture and steadily eroded many freedoms in society.

A second legacy of the conflict is the use of direct violence by the Sri Lankan government against anti-government voices. This direct violence creates grave personal security concerns for activists, academics, human rights lawyers, and members of civil society. For example, in the north-east, minority communities fall under increasing scrutiny by the military, police, and state intelligence services with tacit approval from the government (Ellis-Petersen 2022a). From a higher education perspective, there are several reported incidents of direct intimidation and harassment of academics, students, and staff. For example, in 2014, the Sri Lankan army commander in Jaffna banned academics, students, and staff from marking Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day, commemorating those who lost their lives during the final days of the conflict; this ban continues to this day (Ellis-Petersen 2022b). Direct violence is not limited to the North-East regions; the government continues the culture of arbitrary arrests, intimidation, and misinformation campaigns throughout the country, aimed at discrediting dissenting students, teachers, academics, and others involved in recent protests against the policies of militarising higher education (Ariyarathne 2021). These are only a few reported incidents, with scores of unreported incidents perpetuating deep-seated security concerns for academics, students, and other activists to conduct their work freely.

A third legacy of the conflict is media censorship. When the war ended in 2009, the Rajapakse regime demonstrated triumphalism and authoritarianism. By 2014, the mainstream media had descended into a stupor of ‘self-censorship, self-doubt, and servility to the state’ (Gunatilleke 2017). For example, the regime-controlled state media institutions and many owners of private media institutions had close ties with the regime. After the conflict, the regime used this nexus of control and influence over the media to further censor their own political failings, promote the benefits of ending the conflict, and crowd out alternative voices within the media to remain in power. Furthermore, the regime never supported peacebuilding and reconciliation efforts (Subedi 2021), which were viewed as international interference. This culture of continuing state-based censorship has led individuals and society to gradually practice self-censorship. Those defiant activists, journalists, academics, and students, in the absence of legal protection for the right to privacy in Sri Lanka, live under the constant prospect of surveillance by the state to gather, store, and analyse personal data and communications. Over the past few years, successive governments’ instruments of violence have become sophisticated and expansive; in sum, these regimes are using all these tools of direct and structural violence to perpetuate a culture of censorship and suppression of the Sri Lankan population.

Promoting peace: a higher educational response

Peacebuilding involves eliminating the historical drivers of conflict through policies that promote greater equality and social cohesion (Stewart and Brown 2007). Peace education is one instrument used to address historical educational inequalities and combine curricula and pedagogies linked to the foundation skills, attitudes, and values that foster long-term peace (Cabezudo and Haavelsrud 2013). Peace education within post-conflict higher education policies should address issues of inequality to help foster long-term peace (Milton and Barakat 2016). In contrast, if education policies fail to address these inequalities, long-term peace is elusive, leading to a return to conflict (Brandt et al. 2022). Pherali (2011) suggests that deficiencies in the education system can lead to violent conflict. For example, in Sri Lanka, the discriminatory higher education entrance policy of 1971 made Sinhala an instrument for gaining entrance to university, resulting in the minority Tamil community having less access to higher education (Jayaweera 1997), a driver of conflict in Sri Lanka. Considering the culture of censorship and suppression, higher education in Sri Lanka has a history of playing an active role in many social issues (Dimuthu and Fernando 2021). For example, public university students, academics, and administrators have played an active or tacit activist-based role in Sri Lanka's history of riots, violence, uprisings, and conflict since the 1970s and 1980s. In the post-conflict context, however, higher education has played a very limited role in the peacebuilding and reconciliation efforts in Sri Lanka, despite peace education initiatives being introduced at higher education institutions as a means of promoting sustainable peace. However, their role as being a principal voice for reconciliation and promoting dialogue between cultures is unclear and has been stifled, due to surveillance, security, and censorship, as well as obstacles such as lack of political will, resources, training, research, and evaluation, implementation, and structural barriers.

Research aims and methods

Sri Lanka’s period of post-conflict transition continues to be mired in political, social, and economic challenges, some of which have existed for decades. Sadly, and despite some reform efforts, many of these challenges have remained neglected by successive governments. In this backdrop, this study examines how the Sri Lankan government is responding to foster long-term peace. The study chose higher education as the research context to investigate its crucial role in social cohesion, nation-building, and knowledge production. Although Sri Lankan universities offer programmes in peace and conflict resolution, empirical evidence of their contribution to Sri Lanka's post-conflict peace is limited. The study explored the role of faculty members in peace education instruction at public universities during the pandemic in 2021. At its core, the study is exploratory and descriptive, employing a case study design. The ‘case’ in this study was peace education curricula at public universities. The phenomenon involved the faculty member’s experience in how they understand and make decisions about implementing peace education curricula. Furthermore, by examining the specific contexts that both support and constrain the implementation of peace education within higher education institutions,

As a result of virtual research methods, this study had greater access to and recruitment opportunities. For example, there are fifteen public universities recognised by the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka, and I accessed twelve universities for this study, including those in the north-east. Moreover, these public universities only offer a few courses or units dedicated to peace education or related topics, with a limited number of lecturers available. In this context, 32 participants were interviewed, with a minimum of two or three participants from twelve public universities recruited to improve the quality, trustworthiness, and rigour of the study. Additionally, the study collected documentary evidence and created thematic memos to reflect on the research questions, which contributed to a broader literary and data analysis.

Tensions of conducting virtual research in post-conflict contexts

In this section, I will discuss two key tensions encountered, including residual embodiments and surveillance and consent, that arose through the interaction of the ethics, positionality, virtual methods, and legacies of the post-conflict context within the study. Additionally, these sections will discuss how these tensions were negotiated during data collection.

Residual embodiments

Pivoting to a virtual approach permitted access to a greater number of participants, creating the exciting prospect of interviewing participants from the north-east of Sri Lanka. However, I had to temper that excitement with the tension of residual embodiments I encountered during the virtual research process. I would describe residual embodiments as the lingering and longitudinal aspects of my identity, which are symbolised by the (sub)national and ethnic tensions that manifest in unexpected ways. Moreover, these embodiments include the sense of the visceral responses born out of living in a post-conflict context with constant surveillance and insecurity. As discussed earlier, having a hybrid positionality within the insider-outsider spectrum potentially contributed to these residual embodiments. Some of these manifestations encompassed self-censoring on my part as a researcher, which created an anxious outsider status.

In considering the characteristics of these residual embodiments, I have never been able to access the north-east post-conflict zones while growing up, and there was a language barrier in higher education as Tamil was widely spoken and taught. Additionally, growing up away from the theatre of war during Sri Lanka's conflict influenced this outsider status. The military presence in the region after the conflict, as well as not having any friends or points of reference, added to the tension. It was during recruitment, preparing to interview participants from the north-east, and through my memos during data collection, that I observed the tension of residual embodiments emerged initially. As a result, my hybrid position has evolved within the insider/outsider spectrum and was solidified. The implications for me as a researcher were evident at a personal and methodological level. From a personal perspective, the question that I encountered was, ‘How should I negotiate my outsider status of being an overseas-based researcher with some insider credentials but growing up as an outsider in my own country?’ Furthermore, having a mixed-ethnic heritage stirred up painful memories of the conflict, being subjected to violence and intimidation, and living constantly within the boundaries of the ‘insider status’ of the ethnic majority.

Although the potency of these memories has diminished, they still do reverberate, and my research identity is shaped by them, so they remain present in my thoughts. Due to these residual embodiments, I had to negotiate moments of self-censoring. For example, during the data collection process, I never divulged my mixed ethnic heritage. However, the participants knew that I was from Sri Lanka. My appearance, ability to speak Sinhala, and other traits detailed earlier contributed to this ‘insider status’. In a memo, I concluded that my moments of self-censorship were an attempt to ‘disallow participants from questioning my identity and position me within a sympathiser minority ethnic frame’, noting that ‘I am uncertain if some participants might question my position, intentions, and expertise due to my background’. Furthermore, to avoid stirring up the previously mentioned memories, researchers with minority Sri Lankan heritage or hybrid positionalities may be viewed with suspicion by the majority Sinhala-Buddhist community, which made up more than 70% of the participants in the study. For example, in one interview, a participant from a Sinhala-Buddhist background asked what religion I was raised in. I replied, ‘Christian’. This question was raised during a discussion on religion and peace education. He described participating in inter-religious festivals regularly, as well as taking part in a pilgrimage to a Hindu temple and participating in its rites and rituals. Another participant described the difficulty in translating peace education concepts between languages; she gave an example of the concept of ‘reconciliation’, which was apparently unfamiliar and complicated for many Sri Lankans, as it has different meanings when translated into Sinhala and Tamil; prefacing this example, the participant asked me what languages I spoke – Sinhala and English. On the surface, it appeared that these participants were only responding to the questions and topics discussed. Alternatively, they may have ‘othered’ me by questioning my religious affiliation and the languages spoken. Having to answer such questions stirred up the residual embodiments discussed earlier, which confirmed my outsider status. The implications for the research participants were evident during the participant selection stage of the data collection process. In a memo, I reflected on these implications and wondered how participants, traumatised by decades of conflict, speaking a different language, following different customs and religious traditions, and potentially having strong views on the root causes and solutions to the war, would respond, interact, or be willing to participate.

Furthermore, I imagined how participants might encounter additional tensions such as filtering and self-censorship, shaping their responses. Although the questions I had designed did not explicitly ask about conflict, causes, or aftermath, depending on the participants’ lived experiences, their perspectives, and the wider transitional justice issues, responses may revolve around traumatic incidents, views, or insights. One potential participant in the southern region indicated that his colleagues had political affiliations and had complained about ‘foreign research’ in the past. This participant expressed reluctance to participate due to military and institutional surveillance. Similarly, a participant from the northern region indicated that she wanted to discuss peace education generally, not conflict-related topics; all these prospects were ethnic minorities and did not participate in the study. Similar stories, especially from participants of minority ethnic backgrounds, created trepidation and concern about my outsider status. Would I be able to do justice in producing new knowledge (Pearce et al. 2020) with insights from participants in the north-east?

In navigating these tensions, I had to take account of my own outsider status, participant safety, confidentiality, risk mitigation, data quality, trustworthiness, and rigour. I recruited participants using the snowball sampling method, which is widely used in in-person research. Despite conceptual similarities, some differences benefit virtual research. For example, the technique enhanced the data collection process, as all interviews were conducted virtually one-on-one, making it safer and easier to discuss potential participants from the interviewees’ network, especially in the north-east. Furthermore, the snowball sampling method also contributed to creating a thorough participant recruitment protocol that included participant screening, qualifying phone calls or emails, invitation emails, electronic consent meetings, virtual interviews, and a post-interview follow-up email (if required). In this way, I secured the first interview from that region, and during this first interview, I recall encountering a sense of unease and trepidation, all of which heightened the residual embodiments and my outsider positionality. In an attempt to overcome these tensions, I adopted a dialogic approach (Way, Zwier, and Tracy 2015) during this first interview, with a sense of openness, attentiveness, and inquisitiveness with their responses, becoming a follower of the participant rather than leading the interview as the researcher. A dialogic approach enables ‘people to suspend assumptions about the world, open themselves to new viewpoints, and abandon a win-lose perspective’ (Way, Zwier, and Tracy 2015). Reflecting in a memo, these residual embodiments gradually faded with each completed interview, potentially shifting my positionality from a solid outsider to honorary insider, particularly with participants from the north-east (Baser and Toivanen 2017; Bilgen, Nasir, and Schoneberg 2021; Carling, Erdal, and Ezzati 2014).

Surveillance and consent

The surveillance culture described earlier, COVID-19, and the transition to online learning all posed new threats to academic freedom, making obtaining written consent during the participant selection more challenging. For example, the increased surveillance of research, teaching, and discourse is often linked with consequences such as termination of tenure, including sanctions, restrictions, and isolation. As a result, from 2019 to 2020, Sri Lanka experienced a steep decline in academic freedom levels due to the surveillance and restrictions placed by the government that limited academics’ freedom to research, teach, and publish work freely (Kinzelbach et al. 2021). This culture of surveillance would have posed tangible challenges if I had been conducting in-person research, especially in the north-east. In this backdrop, I was faced with the question of how to responsibly obtain participant consent virtually. Which resulted in the tension between surveillance and consent. According to Lobe, Morgan, and Hoffman (2020), acquiring consent via email is widely used to replace in-person consent practices. Furthermore, the gold standard of getting informed consent is a participant's handwritten signature (Wynn and Israel 2018). Based on the ethics committee's guidance and protocol, obtaining informed consent was possible using various methods, including click-if-you-agree online forms, electronic forms, email-based agreements, electronic survey tools, and electronic signature forms. Additionally, if verbal consent is acceptable, this can be taken at the beginning of every recording.

The implications as a researcher were evident at the moment of pivoting to virtual methods. Considering that the primary method for collecting data was through interviews, online survey tools, electronic forms, email-based agreements, and click-if-you-agree forms options did not seem to fit the study, as the topic of post-conflict contexts is quite sensitive. To minimise the risk for participants and in accordance with the ethics committee's guidance and advice, electronic signature forms were chosen as a suitable method of obtaining consent. Verbal consent is a potential option too, however, there are some limitations to its use. For example, the guidance received by the ethics committee was to gather verifiable, signed evidence. Similarly, being the only researcher, I could not add a third-party to verify verbal consent during interviews, which could have reduced overall participation.

The choice was made to go with the electronic-signature form option rather than obtaining email consent, as sending emails had its own set of challenges. For example, during initial communication about potential participation in the study, some emails may have gone directly to the spam folder, and some email addresses available on university websites did not work and were returned. Moreover, obtaining handwritten signatures involves additional steps for participants, such as printing documents, signing and scanning them, and emailing them back. However, these actions were impossible for participants due to the curfew-based lockdowns and overall health and safety risks. Furthermore, during this period, state intelligence agencies have stepped up surveillance, harassment, attacks, and threats against the opposition, academics, students, and journalists (Human Rights Watch 2020). For example, in the north-east region, from an academic freedom perspective, academics cannot conduct research or publish work in communities with a military presence, deteriorating in academic freedoms (Kumar 2020).

The implications for research participants were more prominent at this initial phase because, as post-conflict settings are more sensitive, the researchers build a stronger personal rapport by interacting with participants (Baser and Toivanen 2017). For example, some participants expressed interest in the study but were unwilling to sign the consent form. These participants cited heightened surveillance issues and the fact that sensitive topics trigger past trauma. I wrote in a memo that ‘I respected and acknowledged their concerns and thanked them for their sincerity and time’, but politely informed them that ‘I could not include them due to ethical protocols requiring signed consent’. I felt the tension because there was a wealth of knowledge that these participants could have contributed to the study. Against this backdrop, negotiating the tension between obtaining consent and safeguarding participants against long-term surveillance and security risks proved challenging. For example, the tangible threats to academics and activists were intelligence services using sophisticated surveillance software to monitor their social media use and email accounts, which included repercussions of intimidation, arbitrary arrest, violence, reputational damage, and job loss (Correa 2022). In this context, moving away from email-based consent helped to minimise risks to the participant's safety and confidentiality. According to Salerno, Williams, and Gattamorta (2020), a handwritten consent form can generate a paper trail, increasing the likelihood of accidental disclosure by other staff.

Furthermore, the metadata created by an email can also be used to track the participant's work computers. The methodological implications included the steps taken to negotiate this tension that other researchers could face in post-conflict contexts. To obtain virtual consent, I chose to include a three-step process. First, I contacted the participants to gauge their interest. Considering my own positionality, I can speak Sinhala, and most of the participants can speak Sinhala as well. However, I consciously communicated in English as a neutral language to help build on my outsider status by illustrating the international nature of the study, gaining greater buy-in from participants, and clarifying terms and conditions for participants. Second, after piloting several platforms for obtaining electronic consent, I settled on the online software Eversign, which is safe and simple to use, and it enabled the upload of all consent forms, letters, and evidence into a single location. Third, I scheduled an online meeting after I sent the documentation, which enabled me to answer questions, clarify points, ensure that participants were familiar with the technology, and guide them through the process of creating their electronic signatures. This eliminated the need to print out, scan, or copy and reduced safety and health risks. Also, this open meeting helped build rapport and ensure that participants’ digital literacy did not hinder their contribution to the study.

Empirical research implications include the disconnect between formal and practical ethics that arose during virtual research. Guillemin and Gillam (2004) suggest that formal ethics approvals are important, but researchers will encounter micro-ethics and ethically difficult situations during research requiring immediate attention. For example, when recording interviews on multiple devices, due to poor connection, only having smartphone access to call in for interviews, and other technical and infrastructure-related issues, it was impossible to record interviews synchronously all the time on the virtual meeting platform. These issues demanded greater flexibility to create an open and safe environment and to provide inclusive access for all participants. In such cases, I used another device to audio record, which the ethics committee had approved prior to commencing the research interviews. Guillemin and Gillam (2004) suggest taking a reflexive stance as a researcher to acknowledge, be sensitive to, and be prepared with solutions as they arise. This balance of rigour and pragmatism towards ethical tensions is essential for virtual researchers in post-conflict contexts (Moss, Flanigan, and Oosthuizen 2018). In this manner, I negotiated this important tension by striking a balance between placing participants’ surveillance and security concerns first and obtaining signed consent by adopting a practical approach that was transparent, discrete, and suited the requirements of the participants and context.

Future reflections

Conducting research in any context is often challenging. Conducting virtual research in a post-conflict context, and particularly during a pandemic, is exponentially more complex due to the tensions raised and examined in this paper. This paper sought to bridge the gap between the existing literature on virtual research and the ethical and positionality implications of conducting virtual research in post-conflict contexts. Consequently, introducing the tension of residual embodiments will position them within the insider/outsider binary for researchers with hybrid positionalities and other researchers studying post-conflict contexts. Residual embodiments suggest that researchers’ own lingering and longitudinal aspects of their identity and visceral responses to living in post-conflict contexts characterised by violence and surveillance can manifest in different ways during the virtual research process. For example, moments of ‘self-censoring’ and the question of being ‘othered’. Future research into residual embodiments could focus on understanding how researchers’ positionalities shift and influence the study, their engagement with the participants, post-conflict context, and how knowledge is co-created. For example, empirical evidence from virtual research is important to post-conflict states, as these tensions shape the knowledge produced, how the post-conflict state is understood, and eventually how solutions are developed by policymakers. Similarly, the tension between surveillance and consent seeks to add to the emerging discussion around broader ethical and micro-ethical issues that arise during virtual research. Future research could focus on the technologies available and investigate how ethical considerations are influenced and shape other areas of virtual research such as anonymity, confidentiality, and potential harm both physically and emotionally for researchers and participants.

As new conflicts continue to emerge (Ukraine, Somalia, Myanmar, and Sudan) increasing attention is necessary to examine key questions when conducting virtual research during and after conflict periods to guide researchers. The procedural implications suggest that ‘researchers’ and ‘the researched’ are not only guided by technological capabilities or access when conducting virtual research. Additional layers in dimensions such as ethics, positionality, and methodological aspects combine with post-conflict legacies such as surveillance, security, and censorship to create practical challenges and complicate virtual research. Institutions should provide future researchers with training to help them address these complexities, such as micro-ethics, which can better inform virtual research design to protect participants and researchers and support robust knowledge co-creation (Roll and Swenson 2020). Furthermore, due to the mismatch of technological capabilities and access between participants and researchers, a tailored approach is required for each participant, which impacts ethics and micro-ethics as well as the overall design of a study. Further research is, therefore, necessary in areas such as virtual research design, methodology, ethics, and positionality within specific post-conflict contexts and beyond to advance the emerging knowledge base within these intersections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program funded by the Australian Commonwealth Government, Research Training Programme as a part of my PhD Candidacy.