Ethics
Researchers can be faced with ethical dilemmas that concern their research work or research topics, their responsibilities, the impact of their research on society, the way of conducting and publishing their research, and other aspects. Studying written artefacts as cultural heritage especially requires a global perspective that is sensitive towards different research contexts and attitudes in societies and states across the world. The aim of the Ethics Working Group is to provide CSMC and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ with guidelines for ethical and responsible research. In doing so, discussions are organised around four key aspects:
- Interpersonal relationships (between human actors)
- Relationships between human actors and social, institutional and state actors
- Objects and their provenance
- Data management
An Ethics committee may be consulted by researchers on all matters pertaining to the ethical conduct of research.
Ethical and Responsible Research at the CSMC
To provide colleagues at CSMC (and manuscript researchers more generally) with some practical guidance on how to carry out their research responsibly, the Ethics Working Group has worked out an overview of basic rules of conduct regarding other people, written artefacts, and research data.
Ethics Working Group
Ethics Committee
The ethics committee can be contacted by any member of the centre. Its task is to advise researchers on all matters pertaining to the ethical conduct of research (for instance on how to handle non-publishable data): ethics-committee.csmc@uni-hamburg.de.