NOTES
The authors give thanks to the many, many people and groups who helped shape our understanding of this topic and influenced the development of this paper. Special thanks go to our reviewers: Jor Arcila, Andrea Basso, Jeffrey Greger, Lauren Haynes, aditi joshi, Letizia Nardi, Lucas O’Bryan, and Carol Scott. Thank you all for your encouragement and pushing our thinking with your generative critique with and from a place of care.
1. As mentioned above, these theoretical lenses for considering trauma are often used in tandem. For example, Ong’s account bridges back into an analysis of how the possessions are pathologized and seen, by factory owners, as a biomedical issue to be dealt with via pharmaceutical interventions versus using traditional local solutions.
2. Beyond the collection of blog essays that were published on the anthro{dendum} website in 2019 (https://anthrodendum.org/author/trauma-and-resilience), some of which are cited in this paper, there are some notable examples of social science works that grapple with the impact of trauma on researchers. Perhaps the best example is the late Billie Jean Isabell’s book Finding Cholita, a “factional” exploration of the long-term effects of trauma on indigenous people in Peru and the ethnographer who is working with them.
3. Academic institutions and programs are often traumatizing to students, faculty, and staff. A 2018 study found that graduate students were “more than six times as likely to experience depression and anxiety as compared to the general population” (Flaherty 2018). Years after graduating, many continue to work through traumas created and exacerbated during and by education and the structures of harm that are complicit.
4. Staying true to our discussion of theoretical framings earlier, it is important for us to note that there are many different models and understandings of what we are calling “trauma.” We have chosen to use this model as it is the dominant one in the cultural contexts that most of us live and practice within. Others draw on indigenous and non-western bioscience modes of knowledge to explore trauma.
5. While we typically think about empathy as an emotional connection, it is critical to note that it has physiological implications as well. Neurobiological studies have shown that the feelings created in us through empathic reactions also impact our bodies via the release of chemicals to help mirror the experience we are hearing about. If our participant is sharing good news, we experience a sympathetic chemical reaction of joy for them. Likewise, when they are sharing a stressful experience, we experience, via the release of stress hormones, a sympathetic reaction of suffering. Literally being exposed to another’s pain and suffering can create sympathetic and embodied physical pain and suffering in us as well (Russell and Brickell 2015).
6. Note that many of those feminist, indigenous, BIPOC, and queer scholars and practitioners emphasize that the rapport, congruence, and empathy researchers work to develop needs to be reciprocal and bi-directional. This focus of developing a relationship “with” the participants versus “at” them is foundational to trauma informed and responsive approaches.
7. The collapse of research encounters into therapeutic sessions is in part due to the parallel frames invoked by similar speech acts in both types of encounters. For a masterful unpacking of the underlying social and metapragmatic processes at play, and the related slippages, see the work of the late linguistic and semiotic anthropologist Michael Silverstein, in particular Talking Politics: The Substance of Style from Abe to “W.” (Silverstein 2003)
8. One proactive step that we as researchers can take to protect ourselves and our participants is to train in psychological first aid techniques. Much like other forms of first aid training, the goal of psychological first aid is to help someone triage and stabilize a situation long enough to get the individual experiencing acute trauma to an expert who can take over their care. For more on psychological first aid, see the World Health Organization’s guide (Snider, Van Ommeren, and Schafer 2011). The Institute for Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder CONVERGE center also has useful training materials around the topic (https://converge.colorado.edu/resources/training-modules).
9. Since its introduction, the SAMHSA framework has inspired a variety of alternative frameworks. For example, in 2020, the Massachusetts Childhood Trauma Task Force adapted the SAMHSA model, refocusing some of the original categories and de-emphasizing others while adding new ones (Massachusetts Childhood Trauma Task Force 2020). Given SAMHSA’s foundational role in the development of many trauma informed and responsive frameworks we are choosing to use it as the reference for this paper.
Additionally, there are other trauma informed and responsive frameworks whose genealogy is not directly from SAMHSA. For a recently published example see Taylor Paige Winfield’s “Vulnerable Research: Competencies for Trauma and Justice-Informed Ethnography” (Winfield 2021).
10. It is often difficult to leave our work at work—especially when things are challenging. As such it is not uncommon for partners or family members to accidentally be exposed to secondary traumatic stress through what we share. If we are unable to be good stewards of our own trauma through self-care (Lipsky and Burk 2009), then we also risk creating conditions at home (and in the workplace) that can potentially traumatize others.
11. We use the term “safer” rather than “safe” throughout the paper, because the latter implies a binary state in which a situation is either safe or unsafe. In practice, there is no way to guarantee actual safety. Assuming that a situation is safe can, in fact, lead to complacency and overlooking potential risks to participants.
12. For one example of choosing less invasive research methods, see taranamol kaur’s account of how, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Code for America research team avoided creating more stress for people applying for food benefits in California by analyzing customer support messages versus directly interviewing people about the impact of the pandemic (kaur 2020).
13. For other examples of how teams used trauma informed and responsive frameworks to help ensure participant safety see EPIC case studies “Designing for Dynamics of Agency in NYC Homeless Shelters” (Radywyl 2019) and “Anticipating Needs: How Adopting Trauma-Informed Methodologies During COVID-19 Influenced Our Work Connecting Frontline Workers to Temporary Housing” (Hitchcock and Johnson 2021) along with the work of the Philadelphia Service Design Studio (PHL Participatory Design Lab 2019) and Sarah Fathallah’s work at the Think of Us organization (Sarah Fathallah 2022).
14. For more on research approaches that build power through participatory methods while conducting themselves in trauma informed and responsive ways see the work of K.A. McKercher (McKercher 2020), Sarah Fathallah (Fathallah 2022), the Public Policy Lab (Radywyl 2019), the Philadelphia Service Design Studio (PHL Participatory Design Lab 2019), and Turning Basin Lab’s collaboration with the JFF on worker led research (Bediako et al. 2021). For those interested in the application of these principles to the design process, in addition to Philadelphia Service Design Studio and the Public Policy Lab, we also recommend looking at the work of Shopworks Architecture (https://shopworksarc.com/tid).
15. Public Policy Lab uses the following seven questions to begin to think through questions of informed consent:
- Are you offering participants fair compensation for their time?
- Are you conducting the consent process in plain language?
- Are you maximizing participants’ control over their data?
- Have you made it clear that the research is not confidential?
- Are you collecting as little personally identifiable information as possible?
- Have you been explicit about potential harms?
- Are you prepared to provide resources if people are having problems? (Public Policy Lab 2021)
16. For an in-depth discussion of self-care in the face of dealing with trauma, see the seminal work Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others (Lipsky and Burke 2009).
17. There are several liberatory design toolkits that include frameworks for exploring historical, cultural, and gender issues. For example, see Creative Reaction Labs’ Equity-Centered Community Design Field Guide (Creative Reaction Lab 2018) and Maya Goodwill’s A Social Designer’s Field Guide to Power Literacy (Goodwill 2020).
18. While we use the same step names as the Missouri Model, we have assigned them to different positions along the journey. Following Karen Treisman, a clinical psychologist based in London, we choose to put Trauma Responsive as the final step as it implies a more active response to the potential presence of trauma and points towards healing as a potential goal of the research process.
Additionally, as with trauma informed and responsive frameworks, there are several organizational development models to draw inspiration from. For alternatives, see the Oregon Model (Trauma Informed Oregon 2021) and the work of Alisha Moreland-Capuia (Moreland-Capuia 2019) and Karen Treisman (Treisman 2021).
19. For an example of how a team successfully advocated for taking a trauma informed research approach, see the 2021 EPIC case study “Anticipating Needs: How Adopting Trauma-Informed Methodologies During COVID-19 Influenced Our Work Connecting Frontline Workers to Temporary Housing” by Meredith Hitchcock and Sadhika Johnson (Hitchcock and Johnson 2021).
20. The term “institutional betrayal” refers to wrongdoings perpetrated by an institution upon individuals dependent on that institution, including failure to prevent or respond supportively to wrongdoings by individuals (e.g., sexual assault) committed within the context of the institution. Institutional betrayal as connected with betrayal trauma theory was introduced in presentations by Jennifer Freyd in early 2008 (Freyd 2022) and is discussed in more detail in various publications (Platt, Barton, and Freyd 2009, 201-; C. P. Smith and Freyd 2014).
21. It is important to note that some of that stress and trauma is often created by the organization itself. Sometimes, ironically, stress and trauma is created in the name of addressing employee trauma. For more on this, see the dscout & HMNTYCNTRD report Challenging Company Playbooks to Workplace Trauma (Villamil, Eisenhauer, and Castillo 2021) and the discussion of institutional betrayal in the Harvard Business Review article “We Need Trauma-Informed Workplaces” (Manning 2022). For resources on dealing with the impact of institutional betrayal, see co-author Rachael Dietkus’ contribution to the Surviving IDEO blog series: “Trauma and Design” (Dietkus 2021).
2022 EPIC Proceedings, ISSN 1559-8918, https://www.epicpeople.org/epic