ABSTRACT
Researching (in)securities can prove challenging especially in post-conflict and post-colonial environments where unequal power relations between the researcher and research participants might unintentionally distort research results. In addition, ready-made questionnaires and even whole research settings can be culturally biased, thus reinforcing silences instead of rendering them visible. In this chapter, Leena Vastapuu explores the possibilities and challenges of the auto-photographic research approach in critical security studies. In her ethnographic methodology, the researcher identifies a target group with a set of background interviews, hands out cameras to research participants, asks them to take photographs under predetermined themes, and carries out individual photo-elicitation interviews. The auto-photographic research approach, Vastapuu argues, allows the research participants to speak for themselves through their own pictures, shifting agency from the researcher to the interviewees. In addition, the approach can provide access to possibly dangerous or insecure arenas and provoke understandings beyond verbal encounters.
