Beyond authorship and accountability? The ethics of doctoral research dissemination in a changing world

Discussion of ethics in doctoral training courses usually focuses on the initial stages of planning and conducting field research. Shifting attention onto the responsibility of the researcher to share their findings throughout the research process, we set out to consider how doctoral students can conceptualise and engage ethically with research dissemination in the broader context of the globalised knowledge economy. A comparative analysis of the ethical guidelines produced by BERA (British Educational Research Association) and ASA (Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth) reveals that both are more concerned with the possible benefits or harm of dissemination to those directly involved in or affected by the research, and pay little attention to the ethical implications of multimodal and digital dissemination to unknown audiences. Drawing on the concept of research as a moral endeavour and the problematising of collaboration as an ethical issue within participatory and ethnographic research debates, we explore the implications for doctoral training courses. We argue that engaging students in discussion on dissemination can open a space to explore who benefits most from research undertaken