Documenting Violence: Surveying Haitian Perspectives and Experiences Amidst Governance Turmoil and Escalating Gang Violence, Gil Sander Joseph, UG '25 (716B9055)

Haiti is going through a particularly tumultuous period in its recent history marked by a complex governance crisis and the expansion of geographic and political control of gangs over Haitian territory. My project is an initiative to collect data on the experiences of Haitians currently living in Haiti, specifically documenting their experiences with gang violence and their perceptions of gangs. This project is one of the first initiatives to capture the perspectives of ordinary Haitians living in Haiti for academic purposes. Although extremely disheartening, the current context represents a unique opportunity for researchers to expand their understanding of the social consequences of gang violence in countries where gangs are increasingly gaining political legitimacy. This project does exactly that. Additionally, one of the contributions of the project is that it is experimenting with text messaging as an alternative recruitment tool for survey research. This could be particularly relevant for countries with limited infrastructure for survey research, as it takes less time than telephone interviews, allows for international data collection, and does not rely on social media for outreach. My goals with this project are two-fold: first, I aim to increase the body of sociological and political knowledge about Haitian society today and second, I want to use the experiences gained along the way to make methodological recommendations to researchers interested in studying Haiti quantitatively so that they themselves can increase the scholarly literature on Haiti within these fields.