ICR is committed to the use of Participative Action Research (PAR) in its work. PAR means different things to different researchers. ICR strives to maximise the participation of informants in all aspects of the research, including the design, management and analysis.

It is our aim to involve the community, population or institution under study in active participation with the researcher throughout the research process from the design of the project to the presentation of the findings. For example the research carried out by the North Belfast Community Research Group.

ICR has experience of working directly in this way with marginalised young people, with those bereaved or injured in the Troubles, with residents of enclave communities, as well as with employees of institutions and organisations that we have researched.

ICR’s Marie Smyth has co-organised two international workshops on research in violently divided societies, one in February 1999 resulted in a book: Researching Violently Divided Societies: Ethical and Methodological Issues edited by Marie Smyth and Gillian Robinson (London, Pluto Press), and a second in February 2002 in Nigeria addressing the issues associated with ‘Researching Ethnic Conflict in Africa’.

ICR also has been involved in the international network of researchers initiated by the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations with responsibility for Children and Armed Conflict and supported by the Social Science Research Council.

It is our experience that research methods cannot be considered without paying attention to ethics. Working in violently divided contexts places a range of ethical responsibilities on the researcher, which, whilst not unique to such contexts are more acutely pressing in violent contexts.