Dr Melanie Hoewer, Dr Caitriona Dowd, and their team have been awarded funding for the project "Fostering Safety and Trauma-Sensitivity in Research with Potential Emotional Impacts."
[L-R] Dr Melanie Hoewer (SPIRe), Dr Christie Nicoson, Professor Kate Robson Brown and Dr Caitriona Dowd (SPIRe)
Project Title: Fostering safety and trauma-sensitivity in research with potential emotional impacts
Principal Investigator: Dr Christie Nicoson
Co-PIs: Dr Melanie Hoewer, Professor Aisling Swaine, Dr Caitriona Dowd
Project Summary:
This project proposal responds to a need identified in several schools across UCD's College of Social Science and Law (COSSL). Many researchers in the COSSL engage in research that has emotional, safety and wellbeing implications, both for the researcher and research participants. This includes, but is not limited to, research on issues of violence, conflict experience, surviving trauma, genocide, disasters and more. While there is growing recognition of the need for institutional engagement and supports for emotionally-impactful research among peer universities in the UK and elsewhere, this remains a gap at UCD. We have identified specific needs related to designing ethical research (e.g., mitigating harm of re-traumatisation for participants) as well as training to support researcher wellbeing (e.g., negative mental health impacts from this kind of study). The aim of this project is to generate recognition of the specificities of conducting emotionally impactful research and contribute to fostering a more positive research culture at UCD in support of such research. The project will create the first dialogue, exchange and networking among researchers in the college conducting research of this kind, and by so doing, identify and initiate the first steps to address skills gaps in support of research with emotional, safety and wellbeing impacts.
We envision this as a first step in a bigger journey to equip researchers with a shared language with which to articulate risks, effective practices to mitigate harm, and critical support to foster a positive, sustainable and ethical research environment at UCD.