Rethinking ethics review: Decolonial thinking in praxis

• Department of History
• Department of Law
• Department of Political and Social Sciences
• Decolonising Initiative

This is the first session of a two-part workshop.

This workshop attempts to unsettle Eurocentric assumptions which often underpin institutional ethics review. Its first session focuses on risk assessment as part of the review process, while its second session delves into regulations of the relationship between researchers and participants. The main purpose of this workshop is to draw attention to the material and intellectual injuries that conventional readings of research ethics can afflict as well as to create space for an honest conversation among researchers from different epistemic communities and institutional gatekeepers to jointly improve the review process.

Who decides which research sites are considered high-risk? For whom? And why? In this session, we will approach the procedure of risk assessment and problematise the often Eurocentric, rigid and objectivist ways in which risk is construed in institutional ethics review. 

Speaker: Ester Sigillò, Assistant Professor, Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna

Discussants: Fatma Sayed, Academic Administrator of the Ethics Committee, EUI; Sarah Nouwen, Member of the Ethics Committee, EUI

Register for the first session of this two-part workshop below.