Reframing Reflexivity

This article critically examines the role of reflexivity in the study of wars, conflicts, and authoritarianism, drawing on insights gained from researching Russia’s war against Ukraine. While reflecting on our positionalities when researching socially and politically sensitive topics is important both ethically and methodologically, we argue that it increasingly proves insufficient. The conventional, individualized understanding of reflexivity falls short in dismantling the epistemic hierarchies and broader structures of power that neglect the agency of our research stakeholders and subordinate the knowledge of already marginalized communities in academia and global politics. Ukraine’s resistance against Russia’s aggression has particularly brought to light previously excluded political and academic subjectivities, underscoring the need for a reframing of reflexivity that challenges the dominance of Russian- and Western-centric perspectives in analyses of the region. This article accordingly contends that reflexivity should be approached as a collaborative practice grounded in the ethic of reciprocity and collective epistemic responsibility, rather than simply a process of personal introspection. Reconceptualizing reflexivity in this way recenters the perspectives and experiences of affected communities, fostering more ethical and equitable knowledge production in political science.