TRIRPP has been adopted by an educational research study in the Democratic Republic of Congo- the BRICE study. You can read more about BRICE here https://www.ids.ac.uk/projects/brice-project-teachers-role-and-well-being-in-contexts-of-protracted-violent-conflict/. Dr Gauthier Marchais from the Institute of Development Studies is leading the study and was keen to use TRIRPP given the high rates of traumatic experiences in the communities where BRICE is conducted. The training manual for recruitment and data collection was adapted slightly to include a range of TRIRPP recommendations for use in the field.

This is providing an opportunity to trial some of the TRIRPP recommendations in a real world setting. In particular, TRIRPP – like the Trauma Informed and Resilience Informed approaches from which it is developed – seeks to take a culturally sensitive approach to conducting research as a means of reducing the risk of traumatisation or retraumatisation and in order to promote resilience. Yet there has been much critique from global settings of how trauma in particular is often constructed from a Western-centric point of view. Here’s an example – a Ugandan experience of needing to comply with Western ideas of how trauma manifests in order to access help https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2019/12/31/trauma-uganda-lra-health-intervention-ptsd-conflict/.

As part of a broader evaluation of the BRICE study’s implementation, those involved in recruitment and data collection in village settings will be asked what they thought of the TRIRPP recommendations, whether they were possible to enact, and how useful they felt them to be. This is really important, providing a means to assess if TRIRPP is culturally sensitive and how it might be improved to be truly global in approach. The prevalence of trauma is also relevant here – whole communities in the DRC have been traumatised including some of those conducting the research. This relates to a separate topic – how TRIRPP can support the researcher too. Please see the separate page on this which is coming soon.