ABSTRACT
This essay arose in the context of a student-supervisor relationship. One of us (Nuala Gormley) brought to this relationship concerns about the presentation in her doctoral thesis of ethnographic evidence gathered during the course of a 21-month period during which she lived and worked in a mission place in sub-Saharan Africa.1 The other one of us (Liz Bondi) found that these concerns resonated closely with some of those arising for her in various aspects of academic life including doctoral supervision. In very different contexts, both of us have deliberated over decisions we have had to make in the course of our practice as academic researchers. Moreover, for both of us it has not been a case of facing isolated moments of crisis; rather we have been aware that our everyday practices entail commitments that have ethical dimensions.
