Call for papers – Beyond Binaries “Fieldwork, ethics and knowledge economies in the humanities”

Call for contributions: Paper submissions with a pathway to publication.

This project, led by Prof Joel Quirk and Prof Lorena Núñez Carrasco, is a collaboration between the University of the Witwatersrand School of Social Sciences, IRD—the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, and IFAS-Research. 

We are seeking paper proposals from both Wits academic colleagues and postgraduate students as part of the ‘beyond binaries’ project, which is hosted within the School of Social Sciences.

One of the goals of our project is to develop a collection of papers for peer-reviewed publication by having contributors draft, present and refine their work at two conferences which will be held at Wits in July and September of this year. These two events are as follows:

• South African Sociological Association Conference (SASA), 6-9 July (papers will be included within the larger conference programme as part of a dedicated stream)
• Fieldwork, ethics and knowledge economies, 9th to 11th September (at WISER).

Selected applicants need to commit to attending both of these events, and to submitting a draft conference paper of roughly 5,000 words ahead of the SASA conference that will then be refined further ahead for the second September event. Successful applicants will have their SASA conference registration fees (and the conference dinner) paid for. The project will also manage the submission of papers to SASA for inclusion within the larger conference programme. The September conference at WISER will be entirely dedicated to our core project themes.

To apply please send your title, 200 word abstract, and 100 word professional bio to Beth Davies-Kumadiro at bdaviesk@gmail.com by Thursday the 26^th of March 2026. For inquiries regarding potential submissions please email Joel Quirk at joel.quirk@wits.ac.za.

We are particularly keen to hear from scholars at all career stages who have undertaken fieldwork to write about – their positionality, political challenges, ethical complications, and academic and financial pressures associated with fieldwork, ethics and larger knowledge economies. These reflections can be based upon 1) experiences as an individual researcher (i.e. here is a paper on how I undertook my research and the challenges and ethical issues which emerged) and/or 2) within the context of a larger partnership or project (i.e. here is a paper on how I undertook my research within a funded partnership/project, and here are some of the challenges which emerged owing to the larger knowledge economies within which I was embedded). Fieldwork is here understood broadly, and can therefore include interviews, survey’s, participant-observation, archives, social media, legal documentation grey materials, and other sources of information. The main restriction here is that papers cannot only be based upon the secondary literature.

The beyond binaries project is organised around three main themes:

1. Global circuits of influence and exchange – moving beyond binaries to rethink power, hierarchy, and their effects.
2. Transformation and decolonization – finding ways to integrate decolonial theory with decolonial praxis, and to thereby help prevent the reduction of decolonisation to a self selecting theoretical abstraction.
3. Fieldwork, ethics and knowledge economies – confronting extractive practices, the possibilities and pitfalls of partnership, imagining equitable collaboration, and interrogating funding streams, solidarity and patterns of global influence.

This call is primarily focused on the third and final theme. This is a topic which begins with the now familiar disconnect between scholarship “on” Africa and the work and activism of scholars based “in” and working “from” Africa. This disconnect casts a long shadow over how and why research data, arguments and analysis end up being generated, validated, and disseminated. This is not simply a methodological question. It is also a larger ethical and political challenge.

Several key issues can be briefly highlighted.

Firstly, there is the enduring question of what ends up being recognized and respected as knowledge in the first place. Within an African context, this raises difficult questions about the effects of colonial anthropology, colonial legal regimes, and colonial governance, where it has long been clear that much of what is “known” about Africa and its peoples has been largely generated by European actors in European languages for European purposes and audiences.

Secondly, there are epistemological issues associated with tensions between the universal and the particular, wherein arguments predicated upon universal human attributes (values, experience, behaviour, rationality) run up against arguments grounded in positionality, particularity, and incommensurability. This is partly a question of who speaks (for whom) and on what terms, and partly a question of when and whether moral values and normative claims can travel across religious, cultural, and historical divides.

Finally, there are questions relating to expertise and lived experience. Longstanding hierarchies which treat researchers as holders of superior expertise have increasingly run up against arguments that individuals/communities that are most directly affected by specific events and issues are the true experts. One way of trying to square this circle is to try to make space for different forms of expertise and experience, but this is easier said than done. The famous call of disability rights campaigners – nothing about us without us – has more recently been taken up by many different individuals and communities, but “meaningful engagement” with “people with lived experience” frequently ends up as a box ticking exercise. There has been lots of talk about participatory action research in recent years, yet we still have very few applied examples of PAR in action. Most forms of research and knowledge production continue to adhere to longstanding conventions that treat researchers as experts and their respondents as “data sources”.

Within Africa, fieldwork often brings to mind the figure of the “native informant”, who is typically positioned as an unacknowledged assistant/broker/translator for European experts who show up at “exotic” locations for short trips to ask locals questions and then return home to build their careers. In recent decades, there have been numerous attempts to move from extraction to equity. These include projects focusing on training local researchers, paying researchers and respondents fairly, naming all researchers involved in published outputs, and structuring projects and outputs in ways that respond to/reflect local priorities and perspectives, such as participatory action research. These kinds of initiatives directly respond to decolonial models and critiques, but they have also repeatedly run up against entrenched power structures and hierarchies. Decolonising fieldwork is one of those things that is primarily treated as a discretionary choice. Some researchers try for equity. Others continue with extraction. Some researchers argue that it is best practice to materially compensate respondents for their time and expertise. Others respond with bewilderment when the issue of paying participants for their time and expertise comes up.

By zooming in on practices of ethics, ethnography and knowledge production, particularly about the African continent and research on Africa writ large, this project seeks to open space for discussions around ethics, methods, and knowledge economies which speak to decolonial priorities in both practical and strategic terms (decolonisation as more than abstract metaphor).

By emphasizing the importance of situated knowledge, cultural context and extractive systems, we want to explore possibilities for sharing best practices and mutual learning across disciplinary, institutional, national and continental boundaries. We do not expect to be able to transcend existing hierarchies and power structures anytime soon, but we do hope to be able to expose their effects and think through alternative pathways and more equitable practices.

If the questions and issues raised in this introduction speak to your research and experience we would love to hear from you. Please seriously consider submitting your proposal for inclusion.

Here are some sources which speak further to these questions:

Horn, L., S. Alba, F. Blom, M. Faure, E. Flack-Davison, G. Gopalakrishna, C. IJsselmuiden et al. 2022. “Fostering Research Integrity through the Promotion of Fairness, Equity and Diversity in Research Collaborations and Contexts: To- wards a Cape Town Statement (Preconference Discussion Paper).” OSF Pre- prints, May 16. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/bf286.

Kalinga, C. 2019. “Caught between a Rock and a Hard Place: Navigating Global Research Partnerships in the Global South as an Indigenous Researcher.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 31 (3): 270–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2019 .1630261.

Landau, L. B. 2012.“Communities of Knowledge or Tyrannies of Partnership: Reflections on North–South Research Networks and the Dual Imperative.” Journal of Refugee Studies 25:555–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fes005.

Makana, S. 2018. “Contested Encounters: Toward a Twenty-First-Century African Feminist Ethnography.” Meridians 17 (2): 361–75. https://doi.org/10.1215/ 15366936-7176516.

Marchais, G., P. Bazuzi, and A. A. Lameke. 2020. “‘The Data Is Gold, and We Are the Gold-Diggers’: Whiteness, Race and Contemporary Academic Research in Eastern DRC.” Critical African Studies 12 (3): 372–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 21681392.2020.1724806.

Moosavi, L. 2020. “The Decolonial Bandwagon and the Dangers of Intellectual Decolonization.” International Review of Sociology 30 (2): 332–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2020.1776919.

Nyamnjoh, F. 2012.“‘Potted Plants in Greenhouses’: A Critical Reflection on the Resilience of Colonial Education in Africa.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 47 (2): 129–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909611417240.

Nyenyezi, A., A. Ansoms, K. Vlassenroot, E. Mudinga, and G. Muzalia, eds. 2020. Bukavu Series: Toward a Decolonising Research. Leuven, Belgium: PUL Presses.

Phadi, M., and N. Pakade. 2016. “The Native Informant Speaks Back to the Offer of Friendship in White Academia.” In Ties That Bind: Race and the Politics of Friendship in South Africa, edited by S. Walsh and J. Soske, 288–307. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

Smith, L. T. 2012. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books.

Vogel, C., and J. Musamba. 2022.“Towards a Politics of Collaborative Worldmaking: Ethics, Epistemologies and Mutual Positionalities in Conflict Research.” Ethnography. First published online, April 21. https://doi.org/10.1177/14661381221090895.

Zavala, M. 2013.“What Do We Mean by Decolonizing Research Strategies? Lessons from Decolonizing, Indigenous Research Projects in New Zealand and Latin America.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2 (1): 55–71.