Recent cross-disciplinary research defines emotionally demanding research as work that requires “a tremendous amount of mental, emotional, or physical energy and potentially affects or depletes the researcher’s health or well-being”. [1]
Crucially, this is not confined to interviews or fieldwork. Within a national security context, demanding research may involve:
- Prolonged analysis of violent, extremist, abusive, or hateful content
- Repeated engagement with graphic imagery or narratives
- Research conducted in fragile or high-risk contexts
- Close proximity to communities affected by violence or threats
- Work that exposes researchers themselves to harassment, intimidation, and/or surveillance. [2]
The emotional demand does not stem from researcher disposition. It stems from conditions of exposure and repetition.
How this differs from “sensitive research”
Emotionally demanding research overlaps with what has traditionally been described as sensitive research, but the concepts are not interchangeable.
Sensitive research has generally been defined by its potential to endanger participants, communities, or powerful interests . [3]
That framing has been valuable, but is incomplete. It has tended to locate risk downstream — in disclosure, harm, or misuse — rather than in the research process itself.
Emotionally demanding research extends this lens by recognising that:
- Harm can arise through doing the research, not only from reporting or publishing it
- Researchers are not neutral instruments unaffected by prolonged exposure
- Emotional impact is often predictable and cumulative, even where methods are robust
Recent work explicitly cautions against treating “sensitive” as a proxy for emotional risk, noting that what is emotionally demanding varies by exposure history, role, personal identity, and institutional context. [4]
What makes research emotionally demanding in practice
Across the literature, several mechanisms consistently appear:
Cumulative exposure
Risk increases with duration and repetition. Researchers may view, code, or analyse the same distressing material hundreds of times — often far exceeding the exposure of participants or the public. [5]
Emotional labour
Much research requires sustained emotional regulation: remaining attentive, neutral, empathic, or analytical while engaging with disturbing material. This emotional labour is part of the work itself, not an optional extra. [6]
Boundary strain and moral distress
Researchers are frequently placed in situations where they feel responsibility for participant safety, distress, or disclosure without having the authority, resources, or role clarity to assist. This creates moral tension that compounds emotional load. [7]
Threat, harassment, and visibility
In areas such as extremism, terrorism, and information integrity research, researchers themselves may become targets of abuse, doxxing, legal threats, or online harassment - often from the subjects of their research. This adds a second layer of emotional and psychological risk - as well as personal and operational security - beyond content exposure. [8]
Safety risks in fieldwork and applied research
Emotionally demanding research is often entangled with physical and psychological safety risks, particularly in fieldwork or practitioner-adjacent contexts. These risks are routinely under-assessed in ethics and safety processes. [9]
Why this matters in national security research
National security research concentrates many of these pressures at once. Research on terrorism, violent extremism, online harms, and securitised governance commonly involves:
- Violent or dehumanising material
- Prolonged analytic immersion
- Adversarial scrutiny
- Legal, reputational, or personal risk
- Limited opportunities to disengage without professional cost
Research drawing on practitioner and analyst experience shows that prior operational exposure does not necessarily protect against emotional impact — and can intensify it through moral injury, or cumulative stress. [10]
Emotionally demanding research is not a personal failing
A persistent institutional failure is the assumption that emotional strain reflects individual weakness or poor coping. The evidence suggests the opposite: emotional impact often arises because researchers are engaged, conscientious, and ethically attentive. [11]
When this is ignored, the consequences are structural:
- Burnout and exit from emotionally demanding research and professional practice areas
- Diminished analytical judgement and ethical sensitivity
- Silence and isolation around distress
- Loss of institutional capability and expertise. [12]
These are not individual shortcomings. They are governance failures.
What responsible research practice requires
The literature is clear that emotionally demanding research cannot be managed through disclosure alone. Content warnings, trigger labels, or informal self-care do not mitigate cumulative exposure or institutional responsibility.
Responsible practice requires:
- Early identification of emotional risk at project design stage
- Explicit recognition of researcher exposure in ethics and safety review
- Shared responsibility between researchers and institutions
- Embedded support across the research lifecycle. [13]
Because emotionally demanding research sits at the centre of national security work, Nat Sec Press treats it as a governance issue — not a personal one — and our editorial standards reflect that.
References
- Quinton et al., 2025, Best practices for supporting researchers’ mental health in emotionally demanding research across academic and non-academic contexts, International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-Being.
- Whittaker et al., 2025, The “Catch-22” of institutional ethics and researcher welfare within online extremism and terrorism research.
- Lee & Renzetti, 1993; What Is Sensitive Research?
- Quinton et al., 2025.
- Skinner et al., 2025, Coping with Emotionally Challenging Research: Developing a Strategic Approach to Researcher Wellbeing, Journal of Academic Ethics.
- Dickson-Swift et al., 2009, Researching Sensitive Topics: Qualitative Research as Emotion Work.
- Bracken-Roche et al., Researching in Fragile Contexts: Exploring and Responding to Layered Responsibility for Researcher Care.
- Whittaker et al., 2025; Pearson et al., Trigger Warning: This Study Contains Extremist Content.
- Pearce et al., Keeping Academic Field Researchers Safe: Ethical Safeguards.
- Vicarious Trauma in Counterterrorism Practitioners; Researching Counterterrorism: A Personal Perspective from a Former Undercover Police Officer.
- Skinner et al., 2025.
- Quinton et al., 2025; Supporting Emotionally Demanding Research.
- Skinner et al., 2025; Quinton et al., 2025; Towards Incorporating Researcher Safety into Information Integrity Research Ethics.
