As ‘green militarization’ (Lunstrum, 2014) research is increasingly developing into a sub-field of political ecology, with increasing number of students and researchers taking on the study of the entanglements between conservation, displacement, militarization, power, race and coloniality – it is a good moment to reflect specifically about what it means to research green militarization, the problems or contradictions researchers encounter when ‘studying-up’, and the methodological challenges people encounter during their research, alongside the legal/ethical issues they are faced with. We feel that although it has now been a decade of engagement on the topic which has led to the emergence of a relatively large body of scholarly work spanning across continents, the inter-personal experiences of the scholars’ everyday narratives have not yet found a place in this work.

The aim of the roundtable is twofold:

1/ a discussion of the numerous challenges (your own personal experience), and how people preparing, or are who at the start with their research on green militarization, can ‘better prepare’ themselves for numerous challenges they are likely to encounter. Or, situations where one might unexpectedly find themselves in a context of militarized conservation without it have been the initial focus.

2/ Yet, instead of solely offering ‘advice’ to scholars, we want to also formulate a critique of the current political climate that allows different forms of intimidation to occur to people not only researching, but also to individuals and communities suffering from the detrimental consequences of the militarization of conservation.

In this roundtable the participants have not been asked to prepare an abstract and paper, but all will prepare a intervention based on their own personal reflection of having conducted research on green militarisation.