Research as movement building: A feminist perspective on researching technology-facilitated gender-based violence

In this edition, we reflect on our experience conducting feminist research through an intersectional lens and what it was like to do fieldwork. We address questions about intersectional power relations, participants' autonomy over their own narratives, and their role as co-knowledge producers, along with the security of research data, ethical considerations, and our accountability to the community.

In this critical reflection of her experience in conducting feminist research on the implication of TFGBV on women and LGBTQ+ people in Egypt, Aya explores research as a site for community building and organizing. 

Researching on the experiences of Black Brazillian women with TFGBV, the authors share their reflection on research methodology, their relationship with participants, the (imperfect) measures they implemented to navigate power dynamics embedded within the research process and recognition of research participants as the key contributors to this work.  

In the face of consistent violence and genocide, Ghiwa and Sabiha from Kohl opens the conversation on doing research while grieving for the destruction of lives being wiped out generation after generation by settler colonialists.

This article by MariaLab reflects on the redefinition of technology and science as cultural carrier bags instead of weapons of domination. Throughout their research, they seek to challenge the traditional dichotomies of subject and object and conventional notions of scientific rigour when working to establish more horizontal and collaborative research relationships.

In researching the multiple ways violence against LGBTQIA+ take place in Ethiopia, Martha and S.A. reflected how the broader social, cultural and political environment influence the process and how they work together collaboratively based on shared values and ethics despite the differences in terms of perspective, approaches and emotional response.

The reflection from our Karina and Analia from Uruguay, shared how the shift from being an object of study to telling stories of their own sex workers community and leading the process of knowledge production. The project challenged the conception of “who” are legitimate knowledge makers, producing key knowledge grounded on socially constructed negotiation of power in real life.

In this article, the authors reflect on the moments when we  felt that their roles blurred during the study on the experience of TFGBV for transgender, non-binary and gender diverse persons in India —when “objectivity” met empathy, when boundaries felt porous and when their identities were a part of the stories that were told.

This article explores the various decisions that the research teams had to make throughout the process and how being reflexive also means being ready to revise research design, and subsequently open the doors for other ways of doing and knowing.  

The research team from UCT discuss their use of decolonial feminism in their contribution to feminist politics of knowledge building and centering of participants’ voices in the research and knowledge co-creation with the participants in their research project.

Gulbakhor reflected on the challenges in navigating a research on TFGBV in Tajikistan, where domestic violence and marital rape are not criminalised, reinforced by a culture of silence and spaces for women to be heard is almost non-existence.