Large research funders based in the North increasingly require that scholars conduct transnational studies, but what does this mean in practice? (Griffin & Leibetseder, 2019). Drawing on a qualitative multi-method research project undertaken in the Global North with funding from a Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Action, I document the challenges raised by funding models that equate excellence with ambition and rewards scholars in the North at the expense of extractivist approaches to studying the South; I analyze the impact of said biases on project design; and I reflect on lessons learnt from fieldwork and the research situation’s specificity (Markham, 2018). Doing reflexivity (Dean, 2017) about this process contributes to illuminating the methodological and ethical tensions, contradictions and risks that face scholars tied to Western funding, and to resetting prestigious grants as opportunities to exercise academic freedom by actively choosing to do no harm at the stage of data collection.