Is Time ‘on the Side of Change’? Incorporating the GDPR in (some of) our Research Practices

Abstract

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) now serves as a framework for research, among other activities, when it involves collecting and using data which directly or indirectly allow the people in question to be identified. This therefore affects our research practice and, we believe, requires collective discussion. We suggest opening up the debate in this article by looking at what GDPR compliance means for our work in concrete terms, based on our own experience beginning a study on family transmission of banal nationalism (the ETPAF project). We also give an account of how, in our case, this new regulatory situation has afforded us the opportunity to add a (small) popular education dimension (or participatory science) to our work that was not part of the initial project and that we consider genuinely stimulating.