This project will fund a workshop to examine the strengths, challenges and ethics of an Ethnographic Peace Research (EPR) agenda and develop guidelines for the future of this emerging but as yet unproven approach to Peace Studies research. EPR is an umbrella term used to describe an approach within the broader field of Peace and Conflict Studies which incorporates various qualitative methodologies to examine and understand the local understandings, perceptions and experiences of international interventions (such as peacekeeping, post-conflict development, or governance and judicial reforms) among those living within conflict or post-conflict states. As such, EPR may incorporate methods such as long-term fieldwork, participant observation, semi-structured interviewing, grounded theory, or collaborative knowledge production.

Practitioners of EPR make various epistemological and ethical claims regarding this approach. Some claim that it provides more accurate evaluation of the local impacts of peace interventions, that it provides voice to local actors, or that it undermines the colonial tendencies of such interventions. But all of these claims are, at this point, largely unproven. The purpose of the new research agenda developed at this proposed workshop will be to examine these claims while developing and critiquing the underlying premises and practices of EPR as it has been practiced. The participants at the workshop will therefore provide papers reflecting on the strengths, challenges and ethics of EPR as a methodology (contributions to a proposed edited volume), and then design and develop new research proposals for collaborative cross-case projects to further develop the methodology for future peace research.