The reflective research diary: a tool for more ethical and engaged disaster research

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight how keeping a reflective research journal can help disaster researchers to work in a more ethical and engaged way. Design/methodology/approach The author analyses the reflective research diary to illustrate how keeping it has helped the author, a white, non-Indigenous researcher, navigate British academia whilst trying to plan a collaborative project with Indigenous peoples during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Findings The author draws out some of the ways that academic institutions can undermine ethical research practice through opaque structures and by incentivising pressuring early-career researchers (ECRs) to conduct fieldwork in dangerous times. The author demonstrates ways the rpeers and author have tried to push against these structures, noting that this is not always possible and that their efforts are always limited without institutional support or change. Originality/value Many ECRs and PhD students have written reflective accounts about the ethical challenges they have faced during fieldwork. In this article, the author adds to this by building on literature in disaster studies and positing how ethical and engaged research can be conducted within British (colonial) institutions.