Dr Lina Fadel: "Untitled (For Now). Or, ‘The Ethics of Even Asking’"

How does research begin? With a question, perhaps. Or several. With a desire to understand, to listen, to know. And then: hesitation.

A few weeks into my fellowship at IASH, I find myself in a moment of ethical suspension: before research design, before ethics approval, and before approaching anyone. As a Syrian researcher living in the UK, contemplating research with minority Syrian women who remain in Syria amid renewed violence, I am confronted by the discomfort of imagining the field from a position of relative safety. What does it mean to ask others to speak of suffering? What gives me the right to ask? And what happens when the very concerns that motivate research also stop me in my tracks?

Before turning our attention to others, what happens when we turn the anthropological gaze towards ourselves? Towards the positions we occupy, the distances we inhabit, the privileges we question, and the feelings that shape what we imagine we might come to know?

Drawing on a collection of fragments, reflections and prose poems written during the first weeks of the fellowship, this talk traces the affective imaginings, contradictions and uncertainties that precede the research encounter. The diary documents hesitation but also produces it; thoughts emerge, falter, interrupt themselves; questions lead to more questions.

Rather than offering resolutions, I explore whether hesitation might be both an ethical starting point and an ethical outcome in itself. When does hesitation become a form of care? When does it become avoidance? Could not asking sometimes be the more ethical thing to do?

I don't know. Not yet anyway.

Lina Fadel is Associate Professor in Social Research Methods and Director of the JUST Methods Research Lab in the School of Business, Design and Social Sciences (BDSS) at Heriot-Watt University. She also serves as Associate Dean of the University for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Holding a PhD in Languages and Intercultural Studies, Lina’s interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of migration, identity and belonging, with a particular focus on anti-colonial scholarship and creative research methodologies. As a migrant academic, her work draws on lived experience to challenge dominant epistemologies and rethink whose knowledge is recognised, valued and legitimised within academia. Lina’s scholarship examines how marginalised communities navigate systems shaped by colonial legacies, while advancing human-centred, creative and justice-oriented approaches to research.

These commitments extend into her creative practice: Lina is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and poetry editor at the other side of hope, the UK’s first literary magazine of sanctuary. Across her academic and creative work, she centres voices at the margins and advocates for more equitable and inclusive forms of knowledge production. Public engagement is also integral to Lina’s work. In 2022, her Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, ‘Become a Sexy Refugee in 5 Easy Steps’, used performance to challenge harmful narratives about migration and stimulate public debate. Her expertise also led to collaboration with UNHCR UK, contributing to the development of its 2023 Two Truths and a Lie campaign on refugee rights and misinformation. Lina is currently editing a volume for Routledge on disobedient and radical research practices and co-editing a second volume for

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