What happens when the instability you came to study begins to unfold around you? In this reflection from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, written during a period of rising regional tensions, Dandrea Lott Reeder shares how research changes when observation becomes personal experience. She reflects on the importance of ethical presence, emotional balance, and the responsibility to witness without rushing to interpretation.
When the Conflict Isn’t Just a Case Study: Doing Fieldwork in Real-Time Tension
By Dandrea Lott Reeder
On June 13, 2025, shortly before the end of my fieldwork, conflict erupted between Israel and Iran. Iraq closed its airspace. My return flight was canceled. The following reflection, written during that time, captures how research and lived experience can merge when the geopolitical ground begins to shift.
Fieldwork is supposed to challenge you. You know that going in. You prepare for cultural shifts, ethical dilemmas, unpredictable interviews, and possible logistical detours. But no work on methodology prepares you for the moment when geopolitical conditions shift beneath your feet and the work ceases to be abstract.
I traveled to Iraq to study resilience in post-conflict communities, focusing on how people rebuild, remember, resist, and continue after the headlines fade. I wasn’t there to document a new conflict. But within weeks, airstrikes began. My return flight was grounded. The consulate issued warnings. Suddenly, I wasn’t just studying instability; I was experiencing it firsthand.
There’s a strange emotional duality to moments like this. On one hand, I felt safe. Life in Erbil remained calm. Cafes were open. Children played in the alley. The air didn’t feel like war. On the other hand, the alerts, canceled flights, and worry from my family back home made it clear the conflict wasn’t “out there” anymore. It had arrived.
So, what happens to your analytic stance when your personal reality begins to mirror the instability you came to understand?
For me, the lines blurred. I could no longer separate “field notes” from lived experience. I became part of the story, not as a local, but as someone suddenly navigating the same unpredictability, the same disruptions, the same tension between what you feel and what you show, and the need to reassure others while managing unease.
My family called the consulate. Friends asked why I stayed. People sent videos, some accurate, others recycled from past crises. I understood their fear. But I also recognized that being there during the tension gave me a different kind of insight, one I could not have accessed had I left.
People speak differently when they’re scared. They reflect differently when instability is fresh. They revisit the past not as a closed chapter, but as something that still echoes in the present. I heard stories not only of the ISIS occupation but of how the current uncertainty was reactivating those memories. I was watching how trauma adapts, how resilience gets renegotiated under new stress.
That’s not data you can schedule. That’s not a finding you can extract on command.
Staying became part of the method. My grounded flight became a metaphor for grounded presence. I stopped rushing. I listened differently. I let the delay be a teacher.
If you’re a researcher working in conflict or post-conflict zones, maybe you’ve felt this too: the moment the study stops being theoretical. The moment your notes slow down because you’re trying to stay steady. The moment you realize that ethical fieldwork isn’t just about consent forms. It’s about how you carry the stories people trust you with, especially when the world around you feels unstable.
I didn’t come to Iraq for the sake of spectacle or headlines. I went because the questions mattered. That choice became even clearer as the situation changed. I wasn’t there to extract meaning. I was there to witness how people made sense of their own lives, without rushing to interpret it for them.
Staying wasn’t about bravery. It was about honoring the stories I was trusted with, quietly and carefully, on the same uncertain ground as those who shared them.
Fieldwork conducted in the Nineveh Plains while a graduate student at Utrecht University
Research and practice in Psychology, Conflict, and Human Rights Steering Committee Member, Global Network of Psychologists for Human Rights
Written from Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq – June 2025