The presentation reflects on the speaker’s choice to use grounded theory in her doctoral research. Drawing on narrative interviews with people from Syria about their experiences with state systems in Germany and Sweden, it highlights the challenges and benefits of grounded theory as a methodology. While the process can be time-consuming and at times disorienting, grounded theory supports a flexible, data-driven approach that centers participants’ own priorities and perspectives. It enables the development of theoretical frameworks grounded in lived experience rather than imposed categories. The presentation also considers how grounded theory fosters ethical reflexivity, and argues that this approach offers valuable tools for making sense of oral histories in contexts shaped by violence, displacement and structural inequalities.
Marianne Samaha is a PhD researcher at the Cluster of Excellence SCRIPTS at Freie Universität Berlin. Her dissertation explores the experiences of Syrian refugees with systems of asylum, social welfare, and citizenship in Germany and Sweden. Her research is grounded in critical border studies, with a particular focus on temporalities, racial capitalism, intersectionality and strategies of everyday resistance. She employs various qualitative methods, including ethnography, in-depth interviews and document analysis. Marianne has a special interest in research ethics in the social sciences, which she teaches at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science. She is also a humanitarian and development practitioner with experience in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey.
This session is part of the SYRASP Online Workshop Series “Syria After the Assad Regime: Community Voices, Research Methods, and Digital Tools”, organized in cooperation with The Lab for the Study for Violence. A description of the workshop series is avaible on SYRASP's website, including information on other sessions.
Please register via syrasp[at]trafo-berlin.de.
