Critical peace and conflict scholars argue that to understand fully conflict dynamics and possibilities for peace research should incorporate 'the local'. Yet this important conceptual shift is bound by western concepts, while empirical explorations of 'the local' privilege outside experts over mechanisms for inclusion. This article explores how an epistemology drawing on feminist approaches to conflict analysis can help to redirect the focus from expert to experiential knowledge, thereby also demonstrating the limits of expert knowledge production on 'the local'. In order to illustrate our arguments and suggest concrete methods of putting them into research practice, we draw on experiences of the 'Raising Silent Voices' project in Myanmar, which relied on feminist and artsbased methods to explore the experiential knowledge of ordinary people living amidst violent conflict in Rakhine and Kachin states. ARTICLE HISTORY

This article discusses benefits and challenges of qualitative-interpretive research conducted in teams of outside (Northern) researchers and national (Southern) associates, in which the latter have considerable autonomy over research design and data generation. Reflecting on our collaboration with Burmese associates on arts-based workshops with violence-affected communities in Myanmar, we discuss how structures and dynamics of power and trustbuilding shaped the research process and data interpretation. Our reflective analysis suggests that interpretivist research 'by proxy' is possible and can be highly enriching but depends upon sufficient time (and funding) for meaningful, long-term engagement with 'local' research collaborators, which our project lacked.

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Many development interventions fail to report results that are important to local people (intended beneficiaries of the intervention) but not of strategic importance to the donors funding the work. Failure to report unexpected results, or those not linked to strategic goals, contributes to an overly negative view from external evaluations by donors and agencies. The causes of the mismatch between actual and demonstrated results failure were studied through stakeholder interests. Design/methodology/approach Nine project and programme managers of similar but unrelated projects were interviewed. From the interviews, previous studies and project publications, the challenges posed by differing interests and different perceptions in reporting stakeholder activities, outputs and outcomes, were identified. The complex environment of many development interventions was analysed and the work was contextualized with a peacebuilding project in Sri Lanka, which the author has previously studied. A stakeholder role and perception analysis was used to map the challenges at four times in the project cycle, producing a dynamic stakeholder analysis. Findings The failure to fully report intervention results was linked to the changing role of competing stakeholder interests as a project proceeds, the conflicting perceptions of stakeholders, the structural oversimplification of a complex environment, and power differentials that allow donors to misappropriate the role of clients. Practical implications Current practice in designing and evaluating projects needs to improve reporting of beneficiary interests. Originality/value To the author's knowledge there are no prior publications in this area of research (under-reporting of development intervention results); the paper is considered highly original.

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