Towards a politics of collaborative worldmaking: ethics, epistemologies and mutual positionalities in conflict research.

This article critically examines the ethical, epistemological, and positional challenges of conducting collaborative ethnographic research in conflict zones, drawing on a decade of joint fieldwork in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. It highlights the limitations of conventional institutional ethics frameworks and advocates for a pluriversal, context-sensitive approach that integrates all stages of research—planning, data collection, analysis, and writing—between local and foreign researchers to decolonize knowledge production. The authors emphasize the importance of mutual positionality within mixed research teams to navigate power dynamics, safety risks, and contested narratives, proposing collaborative worldmaking as a means to responsibly engage with complex conflict environments while balancing reflexivity, ethical flexibility, and epistemic openness.