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COVID-19 ushered in public health guidelines restricting face-to-face contact and movement, and encouraging social distancing, all of which had implications for conducting field-based research during the pandemic. For qualitative researchers, this meant adapting conventional face-to-face methods and resorting to virtual variations of the same in adherence to stipulated COVID-19 health protocols. Virtual qualitative research introduced new concerns and logistical challenges. This paper presents critical reflections on experiences of conducting qualitative research during the pandemic, from the perspectives of a cohort of postgraduate fellows. A critical reflection framework was utilised to explore fellows experiences and meanings ascribed to their experiences. The research findings illustrate three overarching processes which, in turn, shaped ways of thinking, doing and being. First, explicating tacit assumptions about their anticipated research journeys and interrogating these. Second, shifts in power differentials demonstrated by role reversal between researchers and participants, and between fellows and supervisors as they re-negotiated their positionalities in virtual research spaces. Third, context specific sense-making, in which - narrative accounts support the notion of knowledge as a social construct. Our findings have important implications for qualitative research practice. Our study documents methodological nuances and social implications of conducting qualitative research during COVID-19 and in a-South African context. In addition, our study exemplifies the use of critical reflection in qualitative research practice in the specific context of postgraduate academic research. Further, our study illustrates how the use of technology shapes qualitative research protocol development, data collection and analysis phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we critically reflect on our conceptualization and operationalization of "rapid photovoice" as a close-up, emancipatory, action research methodology which has multiple, intersecting social-justice goals; and consider the methodology's potential for helping to achieve such goals. We first consider photovoice in relation to its typical use in public health research, as well as in prior research into student experiences of higher education. We then consider our pragmatic redesign of the methodology as rapid photovoice (RPV), which we conceptualized in response to the goals, parameters, and constraints inherent in our project, which studied student movement violence and wellbeing. In the third part of the article, we describe and discuss our operationalization of RPV in this study on four university campuses in South Africa. In the fourth section, we reflect on some of the ethical considerations arising from the topic and the methodology. In the final section of the article, we critically assess the interim outcomes of our use of RPV in terms of (1) psychologically empowering students to reflect on traumatic experiences in a safe space and enhancing their self-awareness of wellbeing, wellbeing resources and coping strategies; (2) the politically emancipatory potential of photovoice to represent student experiences authentically and with immediacy to higher education policy role-players, and (3) its ability to co-create artifacts of collective memory that provide authentic empirical material for making trustworthy knowledge claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]