Introduction: Protecting Human Subjects Across the Geographic Research Process

This collection of articles examines diverse aspects of human subjects protection. All are authored by geographers actively engaged with human subjects, whether as administrators, active researchers, or both. The articles’ common point of departure is that human subjects protection is not a one-off event; rather, it is a process that is stretched out temporally and spatially, involving multiple actors. Our aim is pragmatic inasmuch as we focus on pushing beyond recounting “IRB horror stories” to engaging productively with conceptual, thematic, and operational aspects of human subjects protection across the research process from a geography-specific perspective.