"Dialogue as a method": Reflections on methods and positionalities in the field of academic displacement Drawing on the research project Protecting Academia at Risk: Towards a New Policy Agenda for a Thriving Culture of Higher Education in Europe (funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, 2024-2026), this contribution reflects on dialogue as both a methodological tool and an epistemic stance in research on academic displacement. One of the project's main deliverables is the podcast _Protecting Academia at Risk (_https://podcasts.ceu.edu/series/protecting-academia-risk-towards-new-policy-agenda-thriving-culture-higher-education-europe.), which addresses questions of academic freedom, risk, resistance, and resilience through conversations with displaced scholars, host institutions, and practitioners. The research is grounded in qualitative, multi-sited, and interdisciplinary methodologies, including cultural and reflexive thematic analysis, sociolinguistics, object-based narratives, gender studies, and feminist theory. Its empirical corpus is based on ninety-six semi-structured interviews conducted with displaced academics, hosts, representatives of Scholars at Risk (SAR) programmes, and university international offices. These methods are complemented by visual storytelling and participatory observation during academic events, which further inform the project's analytical and reflexive approach. In this session, we reflect in dialogue on the methods, themes, and research instruments used in the field of academic displacement. Particular attention is paid to researcher positionality and to the ethical, emotional, and political challenges involved in interviewing displaced academics. We argue that continuous self-reflection is central to migration and displacement research, and that combining different qualitative methods supports a critical understanding of the fact that knowledge production is neither neutral nor detached from power relations, emotions, and the often challenging realities of fieldwork. The concept of dialogue has been central to the project at multiple stages: dialogue between interviewer and interviewee in research settings; dialogue among members of the research team; and dialogue with broader publics through podcast conversations on academic freedom, risk, and resilience. During the conference, this dialogical approach will be extended through live podcast recordings with conference participants, inviting them to reflect on how they understand and experience """"risk"""" in academia today. In this way, the session foregrounds dialogue as a methodological practice that not only generates knowledge but also opens spaces for collective reflection and engagement within and beyond academia.