When research meets politics: lessons from the Boston College/Belfast oral history project

Research output: Non-textual formBlog Post

Abstract

Much of the recent attention given to Boston College’s Belfast Oral History project has focussed on the question of confidentiality and its legal implications. The researchers on the project, the academic Dr Anthony McIntyre and the journalist Ed Moloney, claim to have put their faith in Boston College’s assurances of confidentiality agreements given to the research participants, specifically that recordings would not be released until after the death of the participants. The subpoena actions initiated by the PSNI and subsequent decisions by US courts have put to rest once and for all the naive belief that confidentiality assurances are iron-clad.
Less attention has been given to another aspect of this long and still ongoing saga: this is the relationship between research and politics. Hardly anyone hankers after the idea, always contested, that ideas move in a value-free vacuum produced by detached scholars who, sitting in their ivory-towers, are immune from the political values and ideas that influence them as knowledge-producers. Does the acknowledgement that academics carry political baggage allow them, though, to undertake their work with little or no consideration to their research participants, to the political contexts in which they work, or to implications their work has on other scholars?
Original languageEnglish
Place of PublicationBelfast
Media of outputOnline
Publication statusPublished - 17 Jun 2014

Keywords

  • research ethics
  • conflict
  • oral history

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