Trauma-Informed Interviews with War-Affected Mothers: Positionality, Solidarity, and Ethical Care.

This panel explores the methodological, ethical, and emotional dimensions of conducting trauma-informed qualitative research with Ukrainian mothers experiencing displacement and war-related trauma in the United States and Canada. It presents an innovative design in which all interviews were conducted in Ukrainian by a bilingual Ukrainian researcher who is herself a displaced mother. By conducting interviews in the participants’ first language, the researcher created a space of solidarity, trust, and cultural intimacy that minimized retraumatization and empowered participants to share deeply personal narratives of loss, resilience, and adaptation. Speaking in their own language within a relationally safe environment allowed mothers to articulate experiences of war, separation, and caregiving challenges with an authenticity that might have been lost in translation. This design thus prioritized emotional care (Isobel, 2021).

At the same time, the researcher’s positionality presented unique methodological challenges, including the emotional toll of listening to stories that mirrored her own life experiences. The act of bearing witness to narratives of displacement, separation from family, and the burden of protecting children under conditions of uncertainty brought the researcher into repeated contact with her own trauma. This dual role - as both a displaced mother and an interviewer - created what we call “empathetic vulnerability,” a condition where shared identity facilitates trust and disclosure but simultaneously risks emotional exhaustion and secondary traumatization. Addressing this dimension of the research process is critical to ensuring the well-being of researchers, especially when they are insiders working within their own traumatized communities (Koskinen, 2025; Diab, 2025).

To mitigate the risks of over-identification and bias, data analysis was conducted collaboratively with a second researcher experienced in working with war-related trauma and mothering in Palestine. This researcher, while not an insider to the Ukrainian experience, brought extensive expertise in navigating narratives of maternal caregiving in contexts of violence and displacement. Her analytical distance and prior practice of reflexivity offered a critical counterbalance to the insider researcher’s immersion, ensuring that findings were not shaped solely by personal resonance but subjected to rigorous methodological scrutiny. Together, the two researchers engaged in iterative cycles of analysis, combining insider knowledge and outsider perspective to achieve both depth and reflexivity. This collaborative approach demonstrates the importance of shared analytic responsibility, especially in trauma-informed research where neutrality is neither possible nor desirable, but reflexive balance is essential (Zembylas, 2025).

Through this discussion, we reflect on the broader implications of positionality, solidarity, and trauma-informed interviewing for qualitative research in contexts of forced migration and war. Trauma-informed research emphasizes principles of safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment (Elliott et al., 2005). In our study, these principles shaped not only the interview process but also analytic and ethical decisions. For instance, participants were given flexibility in choosing the location and pacing of interviews, ensuring they retained agency in how their stories were shared. Consent was treated as an ongoing dialogue rather than a one-time signature, with participants reminded at multiple points of their right to pause or withdraw. These micro-practices of care illustrate how trauma-informed approaches can reconfigure power dynamics in qualitative research, aligning methodological choices with ethical commitments (Isobel, 2021).

Another theme emerging from this work concerns the ethics of solidarity in qualitative research. By interviewing as both a mother and Ukrainian, the researcher was not a detached observer but a co-witness to war’s ongoing violence. Solidarity here was not performative but embodied, enacted through shared vulnerability and mutual recognition. This complicates conventional notions of “objectivity,” suggesting instead that certain kinds of knowledge can only emerge when researchers position themselves as co-travelers rather than extractive outsiders (Zembylas, 2025). Yet, solidarity also has limits: without strategies for reflexive distance, it risks collapsing into identification and losing analytic clarity. The panel will address how solidarity can be both a methodological strength and an emotional burden, requiring careful calibration.

We will also discuss the practical strategies that emerged for sustaining researcher well-being. Reflexive journaling, supervisory dialogue, and analytic partnership functioned as protective mechanisms, creating spaces where the interviewer could process her own emotions and separate them from participants’ accounts. These practices illustrate how researcher care is not peripheral but central to trauma-informed research, as the psychological safety of participants cannot be guaranteed if researchers themselves are unprotected from harm. In this sense, trauma-informed methodology extends beyond participants to encompass the research team, acknowledging the interconnectedness of well-being in the research encounter (Diab, 2025).

The implications of this work extend far beyond the Ukrainian context. Global displacement crises - from Palestine and Syria to Sudan and Afghanistan - demand sensitive methodologies that prioritize participant dignity, resist retraumatization, and account for the emotional burden carried by both participants and researchers. Our approach offers a model for designing research protocols that balance insider insight with reflexive distance, solidarity with self-care, and rigor with compassion. It demonstrates how qualitative research can move toward decolonial and participatory practices, where knowledge is co-created rather than extracted, and where the humanity of both participants and researchers is preserved.

Finally, this panel aims to contribute to a broader dialogue within qualitative research about the ethics of care, positionality, and solidarity. In contexts of war and displacement, research is not a neutral act but a relational one, entangled in histories of violence, loss, and resilience. By foregrounding trauma-informed principles and collaborative analysis, we suggest pathways for conducting research that is both methodologically robust and ethically humane. We argue that care is not an add-on to methodology but its foundation when working with vulnerable populations. By sharing both our successes and struggles, we hope to open space for critical reflection among qualitative researchers, encouraging the development of new approaches that honor the dignity of participants while sustaining the resilience of researchers themselves.

To conclude, this panel brings together insider experience, trauma-informed practice, and cross-context analysis to illuminate the complexities of doing qualitative research in times of war and displacement. We aim to contribute to the growing dialogue on decolonial, participatory, and care-oriented approaches in qualitative research, offering insights relevant to scholars and practitioners working with displaced and war-affected populations worldwide.