Students' Research Ethics

All researchers have an obligation to respect human dignity and to do no harm. Researchers shall respect their participants’ integrity, freedom, and right to participate. Researchers have a duty to prevent research participants from being subjected to harm or other suffering as a consequence of their participation in research.

While ethical review is required by Swedish law for all researchers wishing to collect data on human research subjects, the situation of students collecting such data is less regulated. To ensure that also students conform to high ethical standards, the Department of Peace and Conflict Research follows a “Policy on Ethical Guidelines for Student Work" (pdf)

approved by the Board in 2017 and revised in 2021.

According to this policy, all students enrolled in programs or courses at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, who wish to collect data from human research subjects are required to apply for ethical review. More information about the ethical review process is found in the Policy document.

Resources

This blog post, by Kristine Eck and Dara Cohen, provides a summary of some of the issues related to students’ research ethics.

The department offers a 7.5 credit course in Research Ethics to programme students. Learn more about the course in Research Ethics, including a comprehensive reading list (pdf).

Ethics Committee for Student Work

Starting in the spring semester of 2020, the process related to applications for ethics approval can be delegated to the Ethics Committee for Student Work. The committee was formed by the Board on 3 December 2019. The committee is led by the Director of Studies, who recruits an additional 2-3 faculty members to the group on a rotating basis. The committee will accept applications for ethical review as outlined in the course guide for each thesis course. For example, during the master thesis course, there will be four submission opportunities per year. The committee will accept applications outside these submission deadlines only in exceptional cases.

Contact information: Erika Forsberg, Director of Studies: erika.forsberg@pcr.uu.se