How NCRM enabled me to think through ethnographic fieldwork problems during the pandemic
This NCRM impact case study was written by Selena Saligari, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Liverpool.
Background
My PhD was peremptorily halted by the pandemic in March 2020. As a PhD student in Anthropology, I had planned to spend ten months in the peri-urban community of Langas, in the Rift Valley of Kenya, to research domestic energy practices. After a scoping visit to the site in January 2020, I was planning to start immersive fieldwork in Autumn 2020. However, fieldwork became impossible because of a travel ban imposed by my university and delays from the Kenyan Ethics Committee in assessing my ethics application. I began to question the importance of my research topic: I felt that, in such an unsettling time, matters of sustainability in domestic energy practices were probably very low in the list of priorities of vulnerable communities in the Global South. I was worried that I might represent a source of Covid-19 risk to the community, should a travel ban be lifted. I was also concerned about the informed consent of the community I was planning to work with.
Nevertheless, I found myself secretly hoping that a sudden change of events would finally allow me to travel and to conduct ethnographic research in the field. I now recognise that this mindset slowed me down in thinking about possible “mitigation strategies” to overcome the methodological limits imposed by the pandemic. As ‘being there’ represents the quintessential feature of anthropological research, I was struggling to visualise alternatives that could still be classed as “ethnographic”. I was reluctant to accept that my ethnographic data might end up being collected exclusively remotely because I was convinced that they would not return the complexity and the richness that anthropologists look for on the ground. I was also aware that technical challenges could impair remote data collection, for example, the lack of reliable internet connection and appropriate technological devices amongst the target community. In the end, not enthusiastic nor convinced, I just included remote interviews and the use of diaries with specific stakeholders into my research methods’ amendments. Nothing particularly creative, nor well designed, nor nourished by profound methodological reflection.
Participation in NCRM activities
By November 2020, more than a year into my PhD studies, I was feeling deeply discouraged. No signs for the travel ban to be lifted nor news from the Ethics Committee. However, I realised that the rhetoric of the ‘global emergency’ was not enough, anymore, to justify my delays in progressing my PhD. I became very anxious about my capacity to complete my PhD in the timeframe of my funding schedule. Then, in a NCRM newsletter, I came across the work that Melanie Nind, Robert Meckin and Andy Coverdale were leading to build a community of scholars committed to supporting each other’s research activities through the obstacles of the pandemic. The main idea was to engage the research community (within and beyond the academy) to put together creativity, lateral thinking, and recent experiences of successful methodological innovations to expand the array of strategies available to conduct research under the present circumstances. Funded by the ESRC, this was Phase one of the NCRM project Changing Research Practice: Undertaking social science research in the context of Covid-19. To favour knowledge-sharing and discussions around the new research design and ethics, workshops were organised amongst social scientists with experience of doing fieldwork or qualitative research during the pandemic.
I got in touch to find out more. As I had not yet started my data collection and did not have first-hand experience to share, I was added to the list of people potentially interested to contribute in other ways. Through this list, we were kept in the loop of the activities, progresses, and achievements of the group. Materials were shared, for example reading resources like Doing Ethnography in the Pandemic. Feeling part of a group that was trying to solve a common problem gifted me a positive and motivated mindset. I started reading these materials and, little by little, I was able to reapproach my “mitigation strategy", finally convinced that my research methods deserved a second chance.
In December 2020, we learnt of some planned webinars to share the findings of the research group with the wider public. Two different events were organised: one looking at how social research methods could adapt to the constraints imposed by the pandemic (Social Research Methods Suited or Adapted to Covid-19 Times - 28 January 2021); the second focused on which kind of ethical issues and matters of concerns arise when trying to make a research happen (Emerging Issues in Changing Research Practices for Covid-19 Times - 11 February 2021). The topics could not be more fine-tuned to the set of dilemmas I had been trying to juggle for months. I obviously attended.
Impact
The first webinar shook me up with a very straightforward question: "Are all Covid-19 Methodologies based "just" on transferring data collection online?". For a long time, I had thought that the only viable option to collect data during the pandemic was through Zoom or similar platforms. I never even tried to stretch my ideas to explore alternatives. In addition to making me aware of my own biases, the webinar offered a rich collection of different methods that were still viable to use during Covid-19 times: these included sensory methods, expressive methods, video research, the use of diaries, art-based methods, storytelling and, anthropologically speaking, examples of people adopting digital ethnography and autoethnographic methods. The group had even put together a guide on how to creatively combine those methods to exponentialize their potential. I spent days going through the references provided by this two-hour webinar. When The wayfinder guide to conducting ethnographic research in the Covid-19 era was made available online, I realised that there were still plenty of feasible ways to collect data ethnographically, which did not necessarily dilute anthropological methodologies that would be used in normal circumstances.
The second webinar helped me to unpack the ethical concerns that were making me insecure about my PhD project. I was worried about not being tuned into the current ‘hot’ topic. However, the webinar showcased the experiences of researchers who had adapted their methods, while continuing to work on their original subjects. This webinar also enabled me to face my ethical fears and dilemmas and consider how these had been transformed by the pandemic. In particular, Helen Kara and Su-ming Khoo’s three rapid responses to ethics dilemmas were helpful. These suggested that after a first response and reassessment of the situation, it was necessary to increase our degree of care and resilience, but also to look at ethical concerns from another perspective. Kara and Khoo’s work debunks the one-directional, paternalistic, Euro-Western idea that researchers must protect vulnerable participants: the pandemic crisis was affecting everyone, independently from their privileges. The situation of a global pandemic, where everyone was equally exposed to vulnerability, represented a powerful opportunity to rethink the power balance in research relationships. In my case, I realised that my assumption that it was my duty to decide whether my research topic was relevant or distressful for my participants was biased and slightly patronising: from my privileged position I had assumed that that the only priority for Langas’ people was to deal with Covid-19.
Just two weeks after the second webinar, I received the news that my university would allow the resumption of some face-to-face research activities. I successfully submitted a request to travel to Kenya - a moment I had waited for, for so long. However, I had just started to feel comfortable about in my new ways of thinking about the research, and now everything needed to be rediscussed again. I travelled to Kenya at the end of March 2021, and I spent the following six months in Langas. Even though I could finally resume my research as I had originally intended, the awareness and the tools I was equipped with, by being involved in the activities of the NCRM research group, constituted an essential guide through my ethnographic fieldwork, providing me with alternative ways of thinking about methods and ethics. The degree of methodological reflection, creativity, and lateral thinking brought together by these scholars represents an invaluable resource, whose richness is to be treasured when thinking about the design and ethics of any qualitative research.