283 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 Y. G. Acar et al. (eds.), Researching Peace, Confict, and Power in the Field, Peace Psychology Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44113-5_15 Chapter 15 When Research, Identity and Context Merge: A Refexive Assessment on Studying Peace During Confict Aydın Bayad and Aslı Aydemir ‘Peace right now, in fact, that dove, olive branch or something like that… That bird has died, that olive branch has been broken.’ (P34/Turkish-17 years old). This account was recorded just after the beginning of heavy clashes between Kurdish forces and the Turkish military in southeastern Turkey in August 2015. This quote from an adolescent exemplifes the emotional state of millions of desperate, exhausted and vulnerable people who yearn for peace, but were disappointed because of the suspension of the ‘Resolution Process’(RP). 1 Since political turmoil and a coup attempt followed the suspension of the RP, which essentially reversed the achievements made toward a societal peace process, the sentiments refected in the quote are not so distant from the authors, for whom the research topic became a personal struggle: the frst author is living an academic life in exile and the second has received a suspended 15-month prison sentence as a result of signing a petition 2 calling on the Turkish government to continue the RP. Nevertheless, our personal experiences also correspond with the diffculties of conducting research in confict 1 Indicates the time period between 2009 and 2015, known as the ‘Resolution Process’ by the Turkish public, that aimed to resolve the Kurdish-Turkish confict. Different concepts are used to refer the same period (e.g., Peace Process, Kurdish Opening, Democratic Initiative). 2 A petition called “We will not be a party to this crime!” was declared to ask the government to stop military operations in southeastern Turkey. The signatories, whose number at that time exceeded 2200, faced many attacks including legal jurisdiction and imprisonment (see https://afp. hypotheses.org/), and many of them have migrated to other countries. A. Bayad (*) Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Confict and Violence, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: aydin.bayad@uni-bielefeld.de A. Aydemir İstanbul University, İstanbul, Turkey