TITLE:
From Data to Conditions of Knowledge: A Trauma-Informed, Non-Extractive Methodology for Multi-Context Research on War Rape Survivors
AUTHORS:
Wioletta Rebecka
KEYWORDS:
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, War Rape Survivors, Non-Extractive Methodology, Trauma-Informed Research, Multi-Sited Research, Qualitative Methodology, Narrative Heterogeneity, Field-Based Testimonies, Ethics in Research, Conditions of Knowledge Production
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.6,
June
30,
2026
ABSTRACT: This study examines the conditions under which knowledge about conflict-related sexual violence becomes possible within qualitative research. Existing methodological literature on war rape survivors has largely focused on ethical interviewing practices, trauma-informed engagement, and researcher vulnerability, while giving limited attention to how heterogeneous qualitative material generated across different conflicts, institutional settings, temporal contexts, and relational environments can be systematically interpreted without erasing contextual specificity (Ellsberg & Heise, 2005; Fujii, 2012). Research involving survivors of wartime sexual violence rarely unfolds under stable methodological conditions. Interviews emerge through negotiations of trust, safety, displacement, institutional mediation, linguistic complexity, and ongoing political uncertainty. As a result, narrative variability, fragmentation, silence, and uneven disclosure become structural features of the data itself rather than methodological deficiencies requiring standardization (Temple & Young, 2004). Drawing on a cumulative dataset of 402 qualitative interview and testimony items collected between 2007 and 2026 across Central and East Africa, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and diaspora contexts in Western Europe and North America, this article develops a trauma-informed, non-extractive methodological framework for multi-context qualitative research on war rape survivors. The dataset includes formal research interviews, clinical narratives, humanitarian and programmatic encounters, survivor-initiated testimonies, and field-based disclosures emerging through memorial visits, community interaction, and longitudinal relational engagement. The study introduces a tri-axial classification framework linking temporal-historical, contextual-political, and interview-typological conditions of testimony production. Instead of treating heterogeneity as a threat to methodological rigor, the framework interprets variability in narrative form as analytically meaningful and inseparable from the conditions under which testimony becomes possible. Particular attention is given to silence, fragmentation, testimonial adaptation, multilingual narration, and the role of relational trust in shaping disclosure practices across settings. The article argues that conventional assumptions of methodological coherence within qualitative research become difficult to sustain in trauma-centered fieldwork involving conflict-related sexual violence. Methodological heterogeneity is conceptualized not as methodological weakness but as a structural consequence of research conducted across unstable political, institutional, linguistic, and ethical environments. By shifting analytical attention from data extraction toward the conditions of knowledge production, the study contributes to methodological debates within qualitative inquiry, trauma-informed research, and decolonial approaches to violence research.