So you want to conduct trauma-informed research.

Rather than mapping out trauma on a diagnostic level, as fields such as psychology or the medical sciences might dictate, in this toolkit, we will be learning how scholars, practitioners, and journalists around the world approach “trauma” along broader ranges of emotion and experience that can come out of people’s firsthand encounters with genocide, mass atrocities, war, and other traumatizing events. This toolkit will also consider how this type of research can help open up pathways to post-traumatic growth and resilience.

Trauma-informed research often inherently becomes research that causes emotional or psychological discomfort or distress for subjects, participants, collaborators, and researchers alike. It is incumbent upon researchers and practitioners to build in ways to cultivate an awareness of the possible trauma responses that participants may experience, anticipate the risks of re-traumatization, and to learn how to hold space for recovery and care for all parties involved.