Engaging with Users and Stakeholders: The Emotional and the Personal

HCI and CSCW researchers and practitioners are increasingly working in complex social and political contexts where their research activities involve emotional labor and where they have to confront moral and emotional dilemmas. Given the potential impact of these challenging situations on the wellbeing of researchers in the field, there is much need for a discourse on affective impact of research on the researcher. In this workshop, we invite discussion and reflection on the experiences of distress and the role of informal coping mechanisms (e.g., personal narratives) to address them. We will create a forum where researchers and practitioners can discuss and share experiences of projects in sensitive settings and work towards guidelines to inform future projects.