You can find out more about the workshop series and the program at their website.

Janina Steinert also conducted a research project on "Do No Harm? Ethical Challenges and Safeguards for Research Endeavours in the Global South" to tackle this topic. You can learn more about it on the projects website.

Together with her colleagues Lennart Kaplan and Jana Kuhnt, Janina Steinert published an open access paper (Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International) on the subject in the scientific journal Word Development. The rise of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to rigorously evaluate development policy is characterized by a wide range of ethical complexities. While the literature has identified ethical challenges pertaining to study participants, this article argues that the principle of “do no harm” should equally apply to research staff. Based on an ongoing systematic review and interviews with research staff at different hierarchical levels and world regions, it identifies key ethical challenges of field research in the Global South, including threats to physical and emotional wellbeing. Moreover, prevailing power imbalances can create precarious working conditions and inadequate acknowledgement of contributions. An open discussion and learning from “best practices” is needed to address these gaps in development research.