Navigating Ethical Dilemmas in Creative Participatory Research in Forced Displacement: Lessons from Ruptured Atlas, Part IV

Note: The following post is the fourth in a four-part series about Ruptured Atlas, a trauma-informed, participatory creative research project that sets out to map the intimate odyssey of an uprooted community – the Yazidis of northern Iraq – through creative, collaborative storytelling. Click the following links to access Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

Part IV

The Limits of Impact: Research in the Face of Systemic Injustice

“The project was very important and brought together many Yazidi issues, but with the policies in place, we cannot see how these will work. This is not to say that the team hasn't done all they can, but hopefully, your/our efforts will be completed and we will see change happen.”

One of our Ruptured Atlas researchers, 2025

Basma’s photograph of the camp in northern Iraq they have been living in since 2014

For all its innovation and earnest ethical conduct, our project also illuminates the sobering limits of research impact. Projects like this operate in the long shadow of vast structural forces – wars, genocides, institutionalised discrimination – that individual researchers can document but not dismantle on their own. The Yazidi plight did not begin with ISIS atrocities in 2014, nor will it end with an archive or exhibition. As the project’s background notes, “for centuries, ethnic minorities in Iraq have endured continuous cycles of discrimination and violence”, from land dispossession to persecution and mass killings. These systemic injustices form the brutal context in which any research with displaced communities takes place. A mapping project can trace how injustices unfold on the ground and how communities adapt, but it cannot, by itself, break those cycles of oppression. This reality invites a degree of humility about what our scholarship can achieve. Researchers and audiences alike need to recognise that while participatory research may empower individuals and influence perspectives, it has inherent constraints when confronting entrenched power structures.

In the case of the Ruptured Atlas project, the immediate impacts might include increased awareness of the Yazidi people’s experiences, contributions to cultural preservation, and perhaps modest shifts in local policy or aid attention if stakeholders engage with the findings. These are not trivial outcomes – preserving memory and asserting one’s history are vital forms of resistance against erasure. The creative maps and testimonies act as evidence and reminders of accountability, challenging any narrative that would minimise the suffering or resilience of the Yazidi community. Yet, we must also ask: what next, after the stories are told and mapped? Will the painstakingly gathered narratives translate into concrete changes, such as improved conditions in IDP camps, return of stolen lands, rebuilding destroyed villages, justice for atrocities, or more inclusive heritage policies in Iraq? The answer often depends less on the researchers and more on political will and social movements. History shows that knowledge alone rarely dismantles power; it must be coupled with activism, advocacy, or structural reforms to effect real change. The Ruptured Atlas team no doubt recognises this. Indeed, positioning our work alongside organisations like Yazda Iraq, IOM Iraq and Sinjar Academy suggests an intent to feed research insights into ongoing advocacy. The project’s public-facing nature – story maps and toolkit available openly – is an attempt to bridge the gap between research and action by equipping others with evidence and storytelling tools. However, even the most engaged scholarship can struggle to alter facts on the ground. This is not a failure of the project so much as a reflection of the complexity of the IDP’s predicament. It serves as a reminder that researchers must temper optimism with realism about impact.

Crucially, acknowledging limits does not mean conceding defeat or avoiding ambitious projects. Rather, it calls for situating research within a larger continuum of change. The narratives collected in our project might inspire further public interest, guide humanitarian programming, or educate future generations – outcomes that may only become visible years down the line. Conversely, the project might face unintended consequences; for instance, there is always a risk (however carefully mitigated) that exposing community histories can invite unwanted political attention or raise expectations that remain unmet. Ethical reflexivity, therefore, includes planning for the afterlife of the project: How will the data be used? Who will control access to the archives? Have participants consented to the ways their stories might be broadcast? Are researchers prepared to support the community if backlash or new needs arise following the project’s visibility? These questions highlight that ethical responsibility extends beyond the research period and into the realm of impact and its repercussions. In sum, while our project exemplifies the positive role research can play – advocacy training, creating understanding, preserving voices, influencing discourse – it also exemplifies the inherent limitation that it cannot by itself overturn the deep injustices that cause displacement. That task falls to broader efforts in which research is but one part: legal justice for genocide, political inclusion of minorities, and long-term peacebuilding and transitional justice. The value of projects like this lies in connecting evidence, experience, and empathy to bolster those broader struggles. Researchers, for their part, must remain critically aware that their work exists within, and sometimes despite, these larger structures. Such awareness can prevent disillusionment and also guard against the hubris of thinking that academic work alone will save the world. Instead, it positions scholarly interventions like ours as meaningful cogs in a much bigger movement for change – important, yes, but most effective when allied with the communities and campaigns tackling injustice on multiple fronts.

The journey of the Ruptured Atlas project underscores that ethical and methodological challenges are not obstacles to be avoided, but realities to be confronted in research with displaced and marginalised communities. It highlights the vital role of participatory deep mapping in shifting the balance of power in knowledge production while acknowledging the ethical challenges of co-creation. It is through wrestling with these tensions – participation versus protection, empowerment versus power imbalances, helping others versus caring for self, passionate inquiry versus pragmatic impact – that projects attain their deepest significance. By engaging a trauma-informed, participatory approach, the Ruptured Atlas team demonstrated a commitment to doing research with integrity and humility. We treated Yazidi participants as partners in knowledge creation, carefully navigated the emotional minefields of traumatic memory, and remained mindful of the wider inequalities surrounding our work. This work reflects the growing consensus that researchers must be reflexive practitioners, ever alert to their own biases and the wellbeing of all involved. Crucially, the Ruptured Atlas project did not resolve all dilemmas – no single project could. But by making those dilemmas visible and central to its process, it contributes to a more honest, critically reflective and responsible practice of lived history and heritage work with survivors of genocide and marginalised communities.

For readers and practitioners of creative research into displacement, the tale of Ruptured Atlas offers both inspiration and caution. It inspires by showing what is possible when creativity, community collaboration, and ethical care intersect: we get richer histories, ones that honour lived experience and perhaps even aid healing. At the same time, it cautions us to remain critical of our own endeavours. Good intentions must be continually checked against outcomes; power differentials must be acknowledged even in collaborative models; and the impact of our work must be assessed with clear eyes. In essence, the project invites us to embrace a stance of critical empathy – to care deeply about people’s narratives and to critically examine how we collect and use them. Creative mapping of lived histories can only benefit from such a stance. It pushes us beyond simply compiling voices of the persecuted, toward interrogating the ethics of how those voices are solicited, interpreted, and circulated. In the end, the most ethical act we can commit to is staying with the complexity, avoiding simple narratives, embracing care in all its forms, and holding space for the stories that demand to be told.

“The idea of life growing in the camp is deeply connected to life starting again in Shingal. Seeing plants growing between rocks and hard soil symbolises that whenever there is life there is hope, and we are not hopeless at all.”

Naji, Ruptured Atlas researcher, 2024