Visibility & Anonymity: Solidarity in Research across Conflict Borders

This paper reflects on the challenges of working in conflict-affected settings, across borders, subject positions and experiences within the shifting dynamics of armed conflicts and authoritarianism. As the presenting author, I bring together reflections from a series of dialogues and conversations held with colleagues and research partners. We ask questions of the nature of visibility and anonymity in research: who benefits from visibility and what risks these incur, especially when conflict dynamics can change so rapidly. This reflects a tension in much of my current work in the context of Myanmar’s resurgent civil war. Having worked in Myanmar in education and gender since early 2009, I was working on two collaborative research projects when the military coup of February 2021 returned the country to military rule. In these two projects we adopted different strategies in reaction to the coup, in the direction of the research, the methods used and decisions around authorship and anonymity. Both projects had prioritised decolonial feminist approaches to the research. Yet the coup and ensuing civil war has reminded us of the risk and consequences associated with our different subject positions, while also bringing new priorities to the fore. Here, we reflect on these dynamics of working across borders and across cultures in conflict settings.