Vulnerability as identity facet: reconceptualizing vulnerability to conduct civically engaged research

Abstract

<p>Civically engaged research offers significant potential to co-produce knowledge with systematically marginalized communities. However, the greater engagement with community partners as part of civically engaged research requires scholars to more deeply consider what vulnerability means in civically engaged research in an effort to minimize potential harm to community partners. We offer the vulnerability as identity facet (VIF) framework as a way to more deeply engage with the concept of vulnerability. In the VIF framework, we argue that vulnerability should be considered as a variable in its own right which varies by context and which requires reflexivity on the part of the scholar when evaluating risk with community partners. We demonstrate the utility of this view of vulnerability by applying the VIF framework to civically engaged research in natural disaster situations and in authoritarian contexts. In these examples, the VIF framework prompts additional methodological considerations and we lay out ways to enact this view of vulnerability.<br></p>