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Concerns about the problem of over-research have been reported in communities around the world, and across a wide range of fields of social science research practice for decades. Yet, despite this, over-research remains under-addressed by social scientists as a significant research concern. In this article, we discuss the problem of over-research as articulated by the residents of the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon – a camp which is probably one of the most heavily researched neighbourhoods anywhere, and certainly within the Palestinian diaspora. Concerns voiced by Shatila residents focus on three issues, in particular: the relationship of research to expectations and promises of social change; alienation from researcher practices and questions and misgivings about researcher identities and agendas; and the impact of research on social relationships and identities within the Shatila camp itself.

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As the political economy of social science research has shifted, subcontracted research assistants have taken over an ever growing part of the research process. In this article, we report on a case study of the experiences of local research assistants employed on UK-directed research projects on Syrian refugees in Lebanon. While refugee research is framed in the UK as a noble project of helping the world's most vulnerable, these assistants speak critically of their sense of alienation, exploitation and disillusionment with the research they work on. Such problems arise, we argue, not just from subcontracted labour relations in the workplace itself, but also the broader political economy of how overseas social science research is currently produced. Addressing these problems requires giving better recognition to the work, interests and concerns of research assistants, but also rethinking and restructuring the global production of A scandal has been brewing in UK universities recently over allegations of international students paying commercial ghostwriters to produce academic coursework for them. Reports in the media claim that international students are four times as likely to cheat as home students; and a boom in the UK for-profit essay writing industry is being driven by a rise in international student numbers (Dean 2016; Mostrous and Kenber 2016). Explanations for why international students choose to pay others to do their university work for them focus on claims of their low level of academic and English language ability, problems of "endemic corruption"