Vulnerable research: Reflexivity, decolonisation, and climate politics

Abstract

This article is a proposal for embracing ‘vulnerable research’ as an approach that fully accepts and reckons with the harms that research reproduces in a context of climate change and ongoing colonialism. It engages three literatures: on embracing vulnerability in research, decolonising research, and decarbonising research. I argue for taking a vulnerable approach to research, accepting and embracing vulnerability as method in order to challenge the embedded binary of the invulnerable researcher and the vulnerable research subject. Vulnerable research is a particularly important approach in the context of climate change, as the hubristic need to be the person in the vulnerable places, doing the research, is itself vulnerabilising in its environmental harms. I therefore argue that vulnerable vulnerability research requires trust, delegation, and a decentring of the research expert. This would also enable a realignment of knowledge and expertise which is needed for decolonising climate research.