Risk
Risk Assessments
Keeping yourself safe while doing your research is important.
In principle, all students and staff doing research outside of Cambridge should submit a risk assessment. In addition, there may be some forms of research (such as online interviews or participating in online forums) which may also carry risk to the researcher and require a risk assessment. If you are not sure about whether your research requires this, you should discuss this with your supervisor (for students) or with the chair of the ERF committee (for staff).
A risk assessment examines the potential risks involved in your research and how you will mitigate them in order to protect yourself.
Important elements to consider are:
- risk of physical threat or abuse
- risk of psychological trauma, as a result of actual or threatened violence or the nature of what is disclosed during the interaction
- risk of being in a comprising situation, in which there might be accusations of improper behaviour
- increased exposure to risks of everyday life and social interaction, such as road accidents and infectious illness
Risk Assessment procedure
The risk assessment procedure is designed to ensure there is appropriate risk management in place for the activities of students and staff. The Department works with a broad notion of risk and as such, risk assessments are required for all research outside of Cambridge for more than one day at a time. There may also be research that does not involve travel outside of Cambridge, but may still involve risk and therefore require a risk assessment. An example of this might be participation in internet forums or conducting online interviews.
No research applied for should be undertaken unless approval has been granted by the POLIS Ethics, Risk and Fieldwork committee.
The risk assessments are submitted through the university's Peregrine Foresight system. For postgraduate students, a link to this (including guidance on how to use it) is included in the online form.
- Students are directed to the university Peregrine Foresight risk assessment system via the ERF online form. Do not apply for the Risk Assessment independently from the POLIS ERF online form; these applications will not be reviewed. You will be asked to insert your Peregrine Foresight ID number into your POLIS application, before submission.
- For staff, a link to the system is included on the staff applications system on this web page.
Risk Assessment training and further information
N.B. First year PhD students are required to do the Risk Assessment training as part of their programme. This must be completed prior to the First Year Registration exercise and confirmation of completion must be added to your Student Progress Log.