Research and Responsibility: Lessons from Lesvos

When I first began researching the unfolding refugee crisis on the Greek island of Lesvos, I did not realise I was entering what would become one of Europe’s most over-researched sites. In the years after 2015, Lesvos was transformed into a laboratory: a space of extreme border policy implementation, intense observation, documentation, and intervention by academics, (=non-governmental organisations (NGOs), international agencies, and other groups.

The island, its residents, and the thousands of people seeking refuge there were suddenly turned into ‘data’. Their lives were documented and recorded for countless projects, reports, and publications. Lesvos became an epistemic marketplace, and island where research teams came in waves to study, interpret, and circulate knowledge about the ‘refugee experience’. Beneath the productivity of all this research, though, lay a quieter story of exhaustion, overexposure, and harm. Many of those being studied were never asked for consent, while their stories were repeatedly extracted, repackaged, and circulated for others’ academic gain.

Lived experience as “raw material”

My reflections on epistemic extractivism come not only from observation but also from experience. When I began my doctoral research, I was already deeply involved in refugee support work on the island. I had built relationships of trust with local authorities, NGOs, and border crossers long before I arrived as an academic researcher. However, within academia, my lived experience was often dismissed. My insights were treated as “anecdotal” or “unscientific.” I was sometimes seen not as a researcher but as a “local informant” or “fixer.” On several occasions, I watched my contributions become the foundation of others’ projects and publications, uncredited, unacknowledged, and decontextualised.

That experience taught me something fundamental about the hierarchies of knowledge: who is considered a “knower,” and who becomes the “known.” In the borders of Europe, epistemic authority is still shaped by privilege, by who can speak, who is listened to, and whose knowledge counts.

Lesvos as a site of extraction

Fieldwork on Lesvos soon revealed how ritualised and extractive this knowledge economy had become. The same research itineraries were repeated: the Moria camp, Kara Tepe, PIKPA, the “lifejacket graveyard”, and the coastline where boats had landed. Visitors, from journalists to scholars, followed these routes as though they were stages in a humanitarian tour.

Local activists began describing this pattern as “academic colonialism.” Refugees, too, recognised the exploitative nature of these interactions. Mustafa, an activist and asylum seeker, told me:

“Researchers wrung us out like used lemon peels and then left us behind, completely alone”

That image stayed with me. It captures the violence of epistemic extraction, how knowledge about suffering can be consumed for professional advancement while those who share it are left more vulnerable, retraumatised, and unheard. This constant gaze had real consequences. Refugees and activists on Lesvos faced increased surveillance, policing, and even criminalisation. Noor, an Afghan activist, described being interrogated and falsely accused of trafficking simply for being near when a new boat arrived. As researchers, our presence can amplify these risks, exposing people to harm. I came to understand that ethical research is not just about informed consent forms or institutional approval. It is also about responsibility, recognising how our methods and presence can inflict harm and reproduce the very systems of control we claim to critique.

Rethinking research ethics

Lesvos is a painful but powerful reminder of how humanitarian crises can become epistemic or knowledge goldmines, leaving behind communities that are over-researched, hyper-visible, traumatised and unsupported. As researchers we must constantly examine power, privilege, and complicity, asking how our work might help or harm. We need to question extractive methodologies, challenge institutional agendas, and refuse to reproduce the very injustices we study. Ethical research begins with responsibility: listening, respecting autonomy, and ensuring knowledge production benefits those studied. Approaches such as counter-archiving, refugee-led documentation, and participatory mapping offer ways to build knowledge through reciprocity rather than authority.

When I was later offered a research role mapping informal refugee routes and camps in Greece and along the Balkan route, I faced a serious dilemma. Some of these sites were already known to the authorities, while others remained hidden and used by people in flight. While a legitimate research activity, the project risked exposing border crossers to direct harm, increasing their visibility to authorities. Mapping irregular routes and informal camps is also the work of agencies like FRONTEX, which track and block these pathways and demolish these spaces in the name of border security. Contributing to this mapping project would have meant aligning my research with the very logics of surveillance and control - that I sought to critique. I chose to walk away, despite the professional and financial cost of this decision. This act of refusal was itself a small act of resistance. It asserted that research must be accountable to the people and struggles it engages with, rather than serving the interests of securitisation and control.

About the author

Dr Evgenia Iliadou is a Visiting Fellow at the Middlesex University Graduate School.