"How can we talk about our struggles?" reflections on researcher wellbeing and recommendations for psychosocial support for researchers in conflict-affected areas.

backgroundIn recent years, research has revealed the emotionally demanding side of research for researchers (in addition to research participants). This research provides useful guidance, especially for researchers who work with research participants facing difficult situations such as illness, forced displacement, and conflict. Yet, they tend to focus on research projects in the Global North. We explore emotionally demanding research and its impact on researcher wellbeing, and formal support systems and informal mitigation measures in a Global South context marked by conflict and violence and a complex international and interdisciplinary collaboration.

methodsWe interviewed thirteen researchers and one psychosocial staff support specialist involved in a UK Global Challenges Research Fund project on improving healthcare at the intersection of gender and protracted displacement amongst Somali and Congolese refugees and internally displaced people in Somalia, DR Congo, Kenya, and South Africa (2020-2024). The analysis explores the intersections of four recurrent themes: fieldwork conditions, researcher symptoms, support systems, and mitigation measures.

resultsResearching protracted displacement exposed the teams to multiple forms of emotionally demanding work, leading to distress, exhaustion, sleep disruption, guilt, and features of vicarious trauma and moral injury. These impacts were heightened by researchers' own histories, socio-economic inequalities, COVID-19, and insecurity. Formal psychosocial support was provided, but uptake was low due to timing, online delivery, trust, and unfamiliarity; participants recommended compulsory, continuous, locally grounded, and one‑to‑one options. Informal measures - team debriefings, buddying, adaptive safety practices, and peer support - were widely used and valued. Ethical tensions around aid expectations coming from the research participants persisted.

conclusionsFirst, echoing calls for a feminist ethics of care, the article recognises emotional responses as an inherent part of ethical research practice. Second, it articulates the benefits of local wellbeing champions. Third, it highlights that researcher wellbeing support should be a multifaceted and ongoing process rather than a one size fits all once-off event. Fourth, it calls for structural change to recognise emotional challenges as part of research ethics and integrity processes (rather than solely the responsibility of individual researchers) and to budget for devolved and locally appropriate psychosocial support service provision for researchers.