Doctoral research, COVID-19, and political crisis in Ethiopia, Sudan, Rwanda, and the UK: challenges, responses, and recommendations

<h4>Background </h4>Conducting doctoral research is a challenging endeavour, a challenge which as the growing literature on the subject has shown, the COVD-19 pandemic has made even more so. For some doctoral researchers, however, the pandemic has also been accompanied by political unrest and military conflict, putting them and their networks at risk and making their research especially difficult to sustain. <h4>Methods</h4> We have used a collaborative auto-ethnography, and we, a group of seven doctoral researchers based in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan and UK have written our experiences. <h4>Results</h4> Drawing upon the results of a collaborative auto-ethnography (CAE), this article records and discusses the experiences of a group of doctoral researchers who with the support of their organisation, the Social Science for Severe Stigmatised Skin Diseases (5S) Foundation, have been attempting to cope with both the pandemic and internal instability and strife. After firstly setting the context, the article explains why for the purposes of this paper CAE was adopted as our method, and then documents and discusses the experiences of seven doctoral researchers based in Ethiopia, Sudan, Rwanda, and the UK, doing so in terms of four different themes: New Ways of Working and Its Impact, Change and Delay, Mental Health and Well-Being Impact, and Qualities and Capacities. <h4>Conclusion</.h4> What these experiences tell us is that this group of doctoral researchers have found themselves in extremely challenging situations, which have placed exceptionally high demands on them and their support networks, and this has had an impact on their health and well-being although also been the catalyst for some more positive development. Given their lived experiences, the article finishes with a series of recommendations for future research projects of this kind.

The purpose of this collaborative autoethnography was to record the lived experience of a group of doctoral researchers registered with Brighton and Sussex Medical School during the COVID-19 pandemic and also for several of us during military and political unrest in our home countries. As the literature on conducting research during COVID-19 has highlighted, our experiences show that the pandemic experience was one of isolation and stress, concern for loved ones, strain on living arrangements and relationships, worries about completion of studies and access to training and supervision, and reliance on new but unfamiliar technologies. However, for the “5S Foundation” researchers in our group, the experience of the trauma and impact of COVID-19 was compounded by the anxiety and hardship caused by political and military conflict. While limited in scope primarily to Rwanda, Sudan, and Ethiopia, one key implication of our findings is that funding bodies and research organisations that employ “5S Foundation” researchers must continue to ensure in their systems and processes prior to, during, and after research is conducted that the safety and well-being of these researchers remain paramount. A second key implication is that the “5S Foundation” researchers are particularly vulnerable to the more general issues and problems undertaking PhD research per se is now well-known to create. One further implication is how especially determined and adaptable “5S Foundation” researchers must be in order to sustain their research, not least at unprecedented, unstable times.