Co-producing Feminist Research in Post-Conflict Liberia

Keywords: decolonizing methods, water and peace, feminism and peace, feminist research, Liberia, Gender, co-production, women and peace
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 67

Abstract

A general reading of feminist research considers women’s experiences with the intention to improve their living conditions while equalising the hierarchy between researcher and researched to create a more collaborative and participatory approach. I argue that co-producing feminist research in Liberia to examine the link between women, water, and peace is particularly important because of class privileges brought on by the historical repatriation of slave descendants from the United States. Despite the success of the women’s movement to influence peace in Liberia, hierarchical groupings within society nearly threatened the women’s ability to organise. As a researcher, recognising the power hierarchies that overlap with women’s oppression in Liberia can be useful in collaborative research and especially in fragile and conflict-affected settings. This paper will discuss choices of research methods and the advantages of using triangulation analysis in feminist research. It will also demonstrate why using co-production and feminist methods as a way of gathering data can provide an examination of the wider social structures associated with water collection and post-conflict recovery and peacebuilding in Liberia.