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Doing No Harm? Rethinking Vulnerability in Sexuality Research with Young People in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Addressing the vulnerability of participants is a key concern for those undertaking sexuality research with young people and, whilst university ethics committees provide guidelines, their practical implementation is often problematic as what it means to ‘do no harm’ is not always clear. This article explores some of these issues, drawing on the author's own research conducted in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, and reflecting on the author's own experience of navigating what it means to conduct ‘ethical’ research. In doing so, it explores a number of issues which arose: how one ‘hears voices’ and categorises those which are ‘vulnerable’; how one constructs spaces for particular narratives and, in doing so, silences others; and how one's approaches are embedded with ideas of vulnerability which may not always resonate with those which the participants locate for themselves. The article calls for a more nuanced approach which recognises the ways in which vulnerability is constructed and located, including within research practice, and how in their usage the creation of new sites of vulnerability can actually be facilitated.