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"Victims do not merely exist; they are also made, not only through acts of violence during war, but also through acts of bureaucratic affirmation during "the-time-of-not-war-not-peace." In that spirit, I started turning my attention to how the agencies, professionals, and documents of the Colombian state and its transitional justice apparatus shape the politics of victimhood. I call this constellation of agencies, professionals, documents, and encounters "bureaucracies of victimhood" because the category of 'victim' defines not only the people who vie for recognition as such, but also the professional ecosystem that attends to them. Whole floors of bureaucratic buildings in Colombia were named "Victims" and professionals described themselves as working on the "Victims' Team." "Victims" was the word written onto business cards, printed onto high-visibility vests, and featuring on calendars, bookmarks, notebooks, and T-shirts. Victimhood, more than the broader frame of transitional justice, defined the day-to-day work of the bureaucratic encounters I studied"--

Abstract
Complementing discussions of reflexivity as a research practice, this article turns its attention to the classroom. How does a pedagogy that invites students to practice reflexivity represent possibilities for thinking, writing, and imagining otherwise in scholarly engagements with world politics? In response to this question, I explore the dilemmas, challenges, and possibilities students encounter in practicing reflexivity. These include the challenge of meaningfully locating the self in relation to the workings of power, moving beyond a checkbox approach to vectors of identity, and learning to specifically analyze the manifestations of power in daily life. I argue that both the dilemmas and possibilities of practicing reflexivity are related to hierarchies of knowledge creation—and the opportunities to challenge those hierarchies—in the study of world politics. The aim is to illustrate how teachers and students of world politics alike can treat the invitation for reflexivity in the classroom as a potential site of experimentation and freedom that disrupts rigid frameworks of generating knowledge.

Complementing discussions of reflexivity as a research practice, this article turns its attention to the classroom. How does a pedagogy that invites students to practice reflexivity represent possibilities for thinking, writing, and imagining otherwise in scholarly engagements with world politics? In response to this question, I explore the dilemmas, challenges, and possibilities students encounter in practicing reflexivity. These include the challenge of meaningfully locating the self in relation to the workings of power, moving beyond a checkbox approach to vectors of identity, and learning to specifically analyze the manifestations of power in daily life. I argue that both the dilemmas and possibilities of practicing reflexivity are related to hierarchies of knowledge creation—and the opportunities to challenge those hierarchies—in the study of world politics. The aim is to illustrate how teachers and students of world politics alike can treat the invitation for reflexivity in the classroom as a potential site of experimentation and freedom that disrupts rigid frameworks of generating knowledge.

AbstractWhile research on armed conflict focuses primarily on violence and suffering, this article explores the practices of love and care that sit alongside these experiences of harm. Motivated by our omissions to pay sufficient attention to love and care in our research to date, we ask: How can centering practices of love and care illuminate different pathways for understanding the remaking of worlds in the wake of violence? Building on interdisciplinary literature, we conceptualize love and care as practices and potential sites of politics that shape how people survive and make sense of violence as well as imagine and enact lives in its wake. Drawing from our respective research in Colombia and Uganda, we argue that paying attention to love and care expands scholarly understandings of the sites associated with remaking a world, draws attention to the simultaneity of harms and care, sheds light on the textured meanings of politics and political work, and highlights ethical and narrative dilemmas regarding how to capture these political meanings without reducing their intricacies. For each of the pillars of our argument, we propose a set of questions and avenues that can shape emergent research agendas on taking love and care seriously in contexts of armed conflict.

Survivors of systematic violations of human rights abuses carry with them the evidence of their victimization: photographs of the missing, news clippings, copies of police reports. In some contexts, collecting and preserving these documents is part of an effort to claim benefits, such as official victim status or reparations, from the state. In others, it serves as a record of and rebuke to the state's inaction. In this article, through a comparative case study of victim mobilization in Colombia and Sri Lanka, we explore how these dynamics play out in contexts with high and low (respectively) levels of state action on transitional justice. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in both contexts, we examine grassroots documentation practices with an eye toward how they reflect the strategic adaptation of international transitional justice norms to specific contexts. We also examine how they organize relationships among individuals, the state, and notions of justice in times of transition from war and dictatorship. We argue that, beyond the strategic engagement with and/or rebuke of the state, these documents are also sites of ritual and memory for those who collect them.

Survivors of systematic violations of human rights abuses carry with them the evidence of their victimization: photographs of the missing, news clippings, copies of police reports. In some contexts, collecting and preserving these documents is part of an effort to claim benefits, such as official victim status or reparations, from the state. In others, it serves as a record of and rebuke to the state's inaction. In this article, through a comparative case study of victim mobilization in Colombia and Sri Lanka, we explore how these dynamics play out in contexts with high and low (respectively) levels of state action on transitional justice. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in both contexts, we examine grassroots documentation practices with an eye toward how they reflect the strategic adaptation of international transitional justice norms to specific contexts. We also examine how they organize relationships among individuals, the state, and notions of justice in times of transition from war and dictatorship. We argue that, beyond the strategic engagement with and/or rebuke of the state, these documents are also sites of ritual and memory for those who collect them.

Roxani Krystalli's research was supported by fellowships and grants from the National Science Foundation (DDRIG), the United States Institute of Peace (Peace Scholarship), the Social Science Research Council (IDRF and DPDF), the Henry J. Leir Institute (Human Security Fellowship), the World Peace Foundation and The Fletcher School PhD Fund. ; Survivors of systematic violations of human rights abuses carry with them the evidence of their victimization: photographs of the missing, news clippings, copies of police reports. In some contexts, collecting and preserving these documents is part of an effort to claim benefits, such as official victim status or reparations, from the state. In others, it serves as a record of and rebuke to the state's inaction. In this article, through a comparative case study of victim mobilization in Colombia and Sri Lanka, we explore how these dynamics play out in contexts with high and low (respectively) levels of state action on transitional justice. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in both contexts, we examine grassroots documentation practices with an eye toward how they reflect the strategic adaptation of international transitional justice norms to specific contexts. We also examine how they organize relationships among individuals, the state, and notions of justice in times of transition from war and dictatorship. We argue that, beyond the strategic engagement with and/or rebuke of the state, these documents are also sites of ritual and memory for those who collect them. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed

The two authors embark on a conversation about how textiles open up space for different kinds of storytelling — understood as central to interpretive research — about violence, memory and transformation in the aftermath of armed conflict. They draw on their respective research and experiences in the context of the armed conflict and fragile peace process in Colombia, where Roxani investigates the politics and hierarchies of victimhood, and Berit is involved in a project that combines narrative practice and textile narratives into a methodology to explore former guerrilla combatants' subjectivities and wider society's resonances to their preferred stories. Photos of textiles and textile-making accompany their conversation.

Abstract
Interdisciplinary scholarly literature considers how research processes may adversely affect their participants. Building on this work, this article addresses the processes and practices of applied research in contexts in which imbalances of power exist between researchers and those being researched. We argue that research activities in international development and humanitarian work that are typically operational, such as needs assessments, baseline studies, and monitoring and evaluation, represent interventions in the lives of participants, with the potential to create value or harm, delight or distress. The ethical and methodological dilemmas of this intervention have received less attention than purely academic discussions of human subject research. How can applied researchers meaningfully reckon with the effects of the research process on both those conducting it and those participating in it throughout the research cycle? In response, we introduce an approach co-developed over seven years through engagement with applied researchers across sectors. We discuss four interrelated principles—relevance, respect, right-sizing, and rigor—intended to invite a commitment to ongoing process improvement in the conduct of applied research. We also propose a framework to guide the implementation of these principles and illustrate the tensions that may arise in the process of its application. These contributions extend conversations about research ethics and methods to the operational research realm, as well as provide concrete tools for reflecting on the processes of operational research as sites of power that ought to be considered as seriously as the findings of data collection activities.