This chapter summarizes the book's research methodology. Drawing insights from feminist security studies, the chapter calls attention to some of the similarities between the two research sites. The book promotes a conceptualization of security that centers the experiences of women and children, arguing that, by a number of metrics, the lived realities for many civilians living across DR Congo and South Africa are not so different. The chapter therefore offers an overview of the scale and prevelance of violence across the two research, before discussing how the respective research contexts shaped the research approach adopted for the book. The chapter discusses the ethics of interviewing victims of violence, drawing attention to the challenges associated with conducting research with vulnerable or traumatized individuals while simultaneously emphasizing the importance of including perspectives from those who may otherwise be excluded or marginalized from an account of the law.