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Social work practitioners in post-conflict Northern Ireland: Lessons from a critical ethnography

This article presents candid lessons learned by an ‘outsider’ conducting qualitative research in Northern Ireland over a 15-month period. Former combatant women (N = 14) with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) were interviewed using a critical ethnography framework. The findings include a description of difficulties in conducting such research in the areas of accessing hard-to-reach samples, building trust and credibility over time, having a main gatekeeper, maintaining an apolitical position, modeling non-judgmental attitudes, and at all costs safeguarding confidentiality. These lessons resonated with the core tenets of social work practice which enabled and facilitated the conduct of this study.