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The unintended consequences of risk assessment regimes: How risk adversity at European universities is affecting African studies
journal contribution
posted on 2020-02-03, 13:18 authored by Giulia PiccolinoGiulia Piccolino, Sabine FranklinMany European universities have introduced procedures for assessing risks to social
researchers. These procedures are inspired by occupational and safety health standards,
whose logic is driven by the suppression of uncertainty. The rise of risk assessment also
fits into a broader global trend of increasingly representing marginalised areas of the
world as risky and insecure. While there is a lack of evidence about the actual impact of
these procedures on mitigating risks, they are posing an increasing burden on
researchers in terms of time, effort, and financial resources, affecting particularly
research in and about Africa. Risk assessment can also influence the choice of research
methods and reinforce neocolonial patterns of knowledge production by encouraging
the transfer of risk to local partners, whose views are rarely integrated in the risk
assessment process. This analysis discusses the unintended impact of risk assessment and
gives some suggestions for improving processes of preventing risk to social researchers
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
Africa SpectrumVolume
54Issue
3Pages
268 - 281Publisher
German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA)Version
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© the AuthorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Acceptance date
2019-12-06Publication date
2020-01-28Copyright date
2020ISSN
1868-6869eISSN
0002-0397Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Dr Giulia Piccolino . Deposit date: 2 February 2020Usage metrics
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