Search

This paper discusses the lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on research ethics in social sciences by focusing on the concept of vulnerability. We unpack the current conceptualisations of vulnerability and their limitations and argue for the need to reconceptualise vulnerability as multidimensional, consisting of both universal and contextual dimensions, as well as their dynamic interplay. Multidimensional vulnerability is inspired by and relevant to social science research during the pandemic but can also be useful in other contexts such as climate change or conflict. The paper puts forwards several considerations about how this revised concept of vulnerability may be useful when evaluating ethical dimensions of social science research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops and applies a methodology of qualitative inquiry that equips researchers to capture how social actors produce and contest accepted forms of knowledge at the margins of mainstream globalizing discourses in times of crisis. Standing at the intersection between conceptual and empirical research, our methodology builds on the common epistemological premises of 'narrative', as stories constructed and enacted in social life, and 'practice', as tasks and projects composed by 'doings' and 'sayings'. Overcoming the dualism between 'action' and 'discourse' in traditional social theory, this methodology integrates narrative theory and practice theory into a joint framework for fieldwork and interviews. The use of the narrative-practice methodology in ethnographic case studies – such as interpreters' experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in Qatar – allows researchers to gain analytical granularity on participants' storied practice and practiced stories of the crisis, to harness 'peripheral' knowledge and refashion public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers using deliberative techniques tend to favour in-person processes. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has added urgency to the question of whether meaningful deliberative research is possible in an online setting. This paper considers the reasons for taking deliberation online, including bringing people together more easily; convening international events; and reducing the environmental impact of research. It reports on four case studies: a set of stakeholder workshops considering greenhouse gas removal technologies, convened online in 2019, and online research workshops investigating local climate strategies; as well as two in-person processes which moved online due to COVID-19: Climate Assembly UK, a Citizens' Assembly on climate change, and the Lancaster Citizens' Jury on Climate Change. It sets out learnings from these processes, concluding that deliberation online is substantively different from in-person meetings, but can meet the requirements of deliberative research, and can be a rewarding and useful process for participants and researchers alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I outline an innovative remote participatory video (PV) methodology that makes use of participants' smartphones. It was developed as an alternative to co-production research and can be employed when face-to-face contact is impossible or undesirable. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face research interactions have been disrupted or become impossible. Yet it is vital to reach those who are most affected by emergencies and to include their voices. The research reported here was a collaboration between women in Medellín, Colombia, and a team of filmmakers and researchers. We developed an innovative remote PV methodology using participants' smartphones, researching how women from poorer neighbourhoods were affected by the pandemic in their everyday lives. Here, I reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the remote PV methodology, arguing that it offers new avenues for participants to take control of the filming and editing process, and builds technical skills and capacities that have value beyond the timeframe of the project. I conclude that the remote PV method has great potential as a stand-alone method, moving the landscape of co-production research away from a requirement for geographical co-presence and potentially shifting power and ownership towards local co-researchers and participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a form of sensuous methodology known as smellwalks. Smellwalks are a method which require a reorientation of the senses to temporarily emphasize the information received from the nose. During a smellwalk, the researcher employs an active form of smelling to examine their environment that diverges from normal smell perception. In this research, smellwalks are deployed to investigate the experience of lockdown in a suburban town in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Six solo walks were undertaken, three during lockdown and three out of it, to compare the presence and absence of smells during these periods. In attuning to the invisible, intangible, mundane, and small details of life via smell, smellwalks opened opportunities for new embodied and material knowledge about lockdown experience. It is argued that smellwalks offer a sensory and embodied method with the capacity to attend to more than vision and representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much debate around the ‘voice’ of the child in qualitative research. This paper contributes to these discussions by drawing on the philosophy of Reggio Emilia, which emphasizes dialogical encounters that recognize the value of children's subjectivities. The paper critically reflects on a qualitative study of primary education during the COVID-19 pandemic that involved children aged 5–7 (n = 30), teachers (n = 6) and parents and carers (n = 18) in Wales. The study generated data using creative methodologies, field notes and qualitative interviews. The philosophy of Reggio Emilia was utilized to be reflexive about the processes of research design, fieldwork, data analysis and dissemination, questioning tensions between voice and silence and how research teams can face and respond to the challenging issues that complicate the intent of respecting children's subjectivities and perspectives. A key lesson from this process of reflection and questioning was the need to be attentive to and attuned with the subtleties of children's paralanguage and to maintain a level of flexibility in research design and processes that respected children's requirements and preferences. While the study focussed on children's experiences, the lessons learnt from evaluating the study in relation to the philosophy of Reggio Emilia have value for wider qualitative projects with diverse communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue asks what happens to international research and collaboration when the research community becomes temporarily immobilized. The COVID-19 global pandemic powerfully disrupted normal ways of doing research and, therefore, created a perfect natural experiment of the “otherwise” for digital qualitative research in sensitive contexts. The collected papers argue that the lessons extracted from this recent global health crisis should shape our thinking on qualitative research amid crisis and research on the crisis. The authors speak to core themes like the digital platforming of research, continued inequality in research relations, and the concept of compounding crises. The special issue reflects on the authors’ own experiences with international collaborations during COVID-19 in a multiplicity of contexts from Peru, to Pakistan, Mexico and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. This introductory essay argues that the uniquely rapid and global context of COVID-19 offered a glimpse into one possible alterity of research production. It extracts lessons for the present and future, not only for other global crises, but for willed disruptions of research relations so that these are marked by less inequality and more balanced power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the shift from face-to-face participatory action research (PAR) with groups in situations of vulnerability to digital methods during COVID-19, we reflect on how we can go beyond compensating for the physical absence of the researcher from the field. We argue that instead of simply aiming to replace face-to-face research with a digital equivalent for maintaining 'participatory' and 'inclusive' research practices, remote practices have the potential of being more-than compensatory. We suggest that when producing multi-method digital approaches, we need to go beyond a concern with participant access to remote practices. By rethinking remote PAR in the light of expressive rather than participatory research practices, we critically reflect on the (sometimes experimental) process of trying out different digital research method(s) with Brazilian youth in situations of digital marginalisation, including the initial 'failures' and lessons learned in encouraging diverse forms of participant expression, and ownership using WhatsApp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative researchers often refer to the sites they study as a 'field' and the work they do there as 'fieldwork'. Setting both terms in inverted commas implies that their meaning stretches beyond clean categorisation of places or methods. Taking the example of ethnographic research during the coronavirus pandemic, I argue that embracing this excess meaning opens new research perspectives when fieldwork gets disrupted. As a more hopeful intervention into a debate currently focused on lost access, immobility and professional frustration, this article puts forward alternative readings of 'fieldwork' as a relational and emergent process in which proximity and knowledge production are bound to sensitive research practice more than to physical (co)presence. By tragic serendipity, I argue, COVID-19 has the potential to normalise such readings against the traditional gold standard of fieldwork as extended (and often expensive) research stays in places far-away from 'home'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 global pandemic has had a significant impact on researchers as the normal and expected difficulties of research are exacerbated as education and our way of life has drastically changed. This research note is a reflective narrative of the author's experience transitioning from face-to-face to online interviews in light of social distancing and global travel restrictions. Through a descriptive analysis, this article details the numerous ethical, logistical, practical, and cultural issues the author confronted in preparation for qualitative cross-cultural online interview research through personal reflections, current events, and existing literature. The aim of this article is to highlight personal experience to better inform future research and encourage flexibility and reflexivity in research. It is hoped that this article can be of use to further develop cross-cultural qualitative methodology and expand upon the emerging field of literature surrounding videoconferencing qualitative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]