In this conclusion, we summarise some lessons from the examples and experiences in the preceding chapters, and in the e-books we edited on ‘Researching in the Age of COVID-19’ (Kara and Khoo, 2020a,b,c). We remember that crisis has two meanings: a sudden occurrence, such as a ship running aground, or a turning point, marking either recovery or deterioration during an illness. We also note that crisis can be fast or slow, one-off or recurrent, and that all these aspects of crisis can interact in complex ways. We offer some recommendations for doing research in times of crisis, and suggest some future directions for the development of methods and ethics in this arena.

The first lesson is that ethics come into sharper focus in times of crisis. We see evidence of Whyte's (2020) ‘epistemology of co-ordination’ in action throughout the whole book, particularly in the form of an emphasis on prioritising relationships, including taking more care of individuals, communities, and ourselves. We see increased connectedness with and care for participants in Hien Thi Nguyen and her colleagues’ work with older Vietnamese migrants, and increased care for communities in Aisling Walsh's work on the aftermath of colonialism and conflict and their intersection with patriarchy. There is concern for researchers’ well-being in Gbenga Shadare's sobering reminder that in some crisis situations researchers’ lives may be at risk, and so methods such as covert research, that may otherwise be questionable, become necessary. Bibek Dahal outlines the layers of complication that can arise when a researcher's topic is ethics and they find themselves caught up in a crisis that requires an ethical response. In Gretchen Stolte and Lisa Oliver's work, we see discovery in the making of connections between First Nations women, and opportunities for yarning, reweaving connections to land, community, and knowledge, and to share survivorship and healing. In sum, this book speaks to Van Brown's call to expand the ethical frame of concern in research through ‘methics’ (Browne and Peek, 2014).

The second lesson is that crises promote creativity, reflexivity, and relationality in research.

Introduction

The move towards creative research outputs within academia has seen a recent and rapid uptake of mediums such as comics, zines, film, podcasts, and theatre to translate and engage the wider public in academia (Arevalo et al, 2020). These mediums can both be powerful and enlightening ways to communicate research findings, though they also come with distinct challenges (Hall et al, 2021). In this chapter we discuss the process and potential of communicating crisis research in creative forms, using the example of comics. More specifically, we draw upon our own experiences of developing creative research outputs and explore this process by looking at the comic, After Maria: Everyday Recovery from Disaster. This comic translates Gemma Sou's ethnographic research on how low-income Puerto Rican families recovered from the impacts of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the Caribbean island in September 2017. Our aim is to use the After Maria example as a means of developing critical discussions about the representational politics, pedagogy, and process of translating crisis research into comic form.

We argue that communicating crisis research via comics is a highly democratic process because it ensures your research is accessible to your participants as well as the wider public. Relatedly, the production of comics also enables a more participatory research process whereby participants can shape how their story is told. Comics are also uniquely positioned to produce a politics of representation that challenges reductive, dehumanising, and apolitical narratives about crisis-affected people that often circulate in mainstream media (Scott, 2014), and in academic research (Tuck, 2009). Furthermore, comics offer powerful rhetorical power as they are uniquely able to distil complex ideas into engaging and highly learnable forms (Chute, 2016).

We begin by outlining the communicative capacity of comics, before giving further details on the development of After Maria. We then detail practical issues, learning spaces, and representational challenges, before offering some conclusions.

Comics

A comic is generally an illustration that employs metaphor and/or storytelling to clearly communicate an idea to a broad audience (McCloud, 1994). Comics that centre on and tackle political, social, and economic issues are known as ‘serious’ comics.

Introduction

Most researchers understand that working with human participants not only enriches and validates their research but also imposes a duty of care and due diligence which comes with appreciating what Guillemin and Gilliam described as ‘ethical tensions’ (2004: 271). Actually, the starting point of any research should be the awareness and recognition of the ethical tensions and dilemmas that might arise in a given research situation. However, while it is helpful for researchers to have clarity about ethical tensions and dilemmas, it is often difficult in practice to maintain and keep a balanced focus between critical reflection on researcher positionality and ethical responsibility for participants’ welfare. In essence, researchers must understand the ‘ethically important environments’ in which prime consideration is devoted to the ‘welfare and integrity of the individual participants involved in the research’ (Guillemin and Gilliam, 2004: 271). Thus, researchers require not just a ‘common sense’ understanding that draws on their experiences and knowledge but must also exhibit a comprehensive ethical and methodological reflection, when undertaking challenging research. Nonetheless, nothing compares to the peculiar uncertainties and difficulties that arise when conducting research in fragile or conflict-affected environments where managing ethical tensions and ethical moments requires flexibility and adaptability.

This chapter is based on my experience while undertaking doctoral research in the northern region of Nigeria where persistent conflicts occasioned by the brutal terrorist attacks perpetrated by Boko Haram insurgents massively destroyed the regional economy, disrupted livelihoods, and created pervasive insecurity. Boko Haram are a notorious Islamic statesponsored, Jihadist terrorist group operating in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria (also parts of Chad, Niger, and Cameroon republics) for over a decade. They kidnapped, in April 2014, the Chibok schoolgirls. ‘Boko Haram’ in Hausa language means: ‘Western education is sinful’. The lessons and insights garnered from the experience of undertaking research in that context constitute the focus of this chapter. The experience of undertaking fieldwork in an unstable and fragile context is not novel to me. However, the peculiar insights gleaned from the unorthodox practices and unconventional norms that characterised the research endeavour is what this chapter contributes to the burgeoning literature of researching in uncertain times and in difficult regions where the work is challenged by many risks that could impede success.

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest global crisis of an era, rewriting norms and expectations woven into the social fabric of everyday life. Perhaps unsurprisingly, questions about the differential economic, social, and relational impacts of this crisis have preoccupied social science researchers, policymakers, and service providers across the globe in 2020. The pandemic, and various forms of lockdown imposed in most majority and minority world contexts, has dramatically altered our lives, albeit in different ways. Like other times of crisis, such as the 2008– 12 global economic recession, these unfolding dimensions of rupture and change preoccupy socio-historical researchers now and will do so long into the future.

Social scientists have a unique and imperative role in advancing knowledge of the unfolding impacts of COVID-19 including how these new social conditions are affecting people's lives, needs, attitudes, and behaviours. Yet the changes wrought by the crisis have also simultaneously altered the conduct of social sciences research, placing new restrictions on how new knowledge may be produced. In this chapter, we consider how the re-use of qualitative data and its preservation has become especially pertinent as part of an important repertoire of research methods. Our position entails a more nuanced ethical sensibility towards the archiving and reuse of existing research data in the context of capturing the evolving and uneven impacts of crises and understanding the social contexts from which they emerge. We therefore argue for, and raise awareness of, the tremendous value and potential for qualitative data re-use via the associated methodology of qualitative secondary analysis (or QSA) and make a case for data preservation and archiving.

We are prompted to write this chapter because, while there has been significant innovation in methods of qualitative data re-use and QSA over the past two decades, these have not traditionally been considered as part of the ‘go to’ methodological repertoire for qualitative, in-depth engagement (for example, interviews, participatory methods). In the early stages of the national lockdown, there was a proliferation of work newly engaging with the various potentials of digital research methods and resources for research.

Introduction

This chapter discusses how participatory methodologies were developed for use in what became an entirely online study researching critical English language education in a context of protracted crisis; that is, the Gaza Strip (Palestine). The project on which this chapter is based was developed between 2014 and 2017; however, this chapter was written in summer 2020 when people in most countries of the world were self-isolating, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Contexts of protracted crisis as in the Gaza Strip, as well as more generally contexts in the Global South in which different forms of knowledges and multiple ways of working coexist, are well positioned to illuminate the research landscape and methodological adaptations that these times of uncertainties require.

The Gaza Strip has been under blockade since 2007, and this impedes free movement and the flows of people and goods into and out of the Strip. The condition of forced immobility has consequences for the mental and physical well-being of Gazan inhabitants. In the context of academia, the blockade affects the mobility of staff, who, hence, cannot attend international conferences and events, making it challenging to create networks and longlasting, collaborative partnerships. In addition, the flow of knowledge into and out of the Strip is affected not just metaphorically, as books and any other materials published outside the Strip cannot easily be posted and reach colleagues inside the Strip. The study on which this chapter is based aimed at co-constructing critical, creative, and localised pedagogies for English language education in secondary schools in the Gaza Strip (Imperiale, 2017; Imperiale et al, 2017; Imperiale, 2018; Imperiale, 2021). Through a series of workshops, that were held entirely online, the researcher – based in the UK – and the participants, 13 pre-service English teachers based in the Gaza Strip, analysed and developed teaching materials and lesson plans for teaching English adopting creative and critical methodologies. Some of the teaching materials were then trialled and evaluated based on participants’ use of them in their classrooms. The study was grounded in participatory methodologies, and consisted of a cycle of critical participatory action research (CPAR), which included the phases of planning, action, observation, and reflection.

The creative arts therapies offer experiences of psychotherapy that are polysensory, paradoxical, performative, and provocative. This variegated practice is, however, often researched using rigid and reductive processes – causing we arts therapists-researcher-educators at Whitecliffe College (Aotearoa New Zealand) to itch for less dissonance between what we research and how we research it, and greater congruence between skill-sets practised in both research and therapy. We thus embarked upon diverse adventures with self-as-subject and creative research, which we now entangle under the investigational umbrella-term abr+a (arts-based research through autoethnography) (Green et al, 2018). Fuelled by belief that arts therapists enhance both self and profession using these performative research approaches, abr+a now influences research taught and practised by faculty and students in the Whitecliffe School of Creative Arts Therapies.

McNiff's (1998: 170) exhortation to arts therapists that ‘the process of research should correspond as closely as possible to the experience of therapy’ informs this choice to blend arts-based research (ABR) and autoethnography (Holman Jones, Adams, and Ellis, 2015; Leavy, 2018). Simultaneously a practice, process, and product, ABR is an ‘aesthetic way of knowing’ (Greenwood, 2012): the researcher investigates a research question through artistic creating during data gathering/generation and/or analysis/translation and/or presentation. Autoethnography studies ‘the culture of self ‘ (Ricci, 2003) or others through self, encouraging ‘researchers to start with their own lived experiences as a way of uncovering new ways of knowing and understanding wider cultural beliefs’ (Gray, 2011: 67).

When COVID-19 began affecting our personal, professional, and educational worlds, we turned to abr+a to help us express, explore, and endure these uncertainties. In this chapter, we demonstrate how in April 2020, during our first major lockdown in Aotearoa, we used abr+a to craft and share metaphors for the pandemic. During this initial iteration, we lecturers gifted our nascent metaphors for the pandemic to our Master of Arts in Arts Therapy (MAAT) students. This cohort in turn used abr+a to birth, explore, and share their own generative metaphors.

Introduction

The ongoing COVID-19 health emergency, and the restrictions that it has placed on research, led many researchers to the re-evaluation of how social research interviews need to go online and how these can be enhanced. The online space presents a platform that brings participants and researchers together in an environment owned by both regardless of who hosts the online session. Online methods are likely to continue through emergencies and crises in general and beyond, and this calls for innovative ways to enhance online research interviews.

This chapter discusses a study of a series of online interviews where interviewees were invited to bring an object of personal value with the aim to facilitate a discussion on ‘happiness in lockdown’. The selected topic served as a vehicle to explore this approach to online interviews while contextualising it in a crisis situation. It also helped to anchor the discussion around a positive theme in the middle of a global crisis. The study aimed at exploring the dynamics observed and the type of thematic materials gathered in this research context. The focus is to investigate the research technique and explore the benefits and challenges of using objects in social research interviews online.

As participants select objects related to the research, they are given some control to steer the discussion. Hennigar (1997) discussed the shift in thinking when artefacts are placed at the centre of the conversation, and the participant's own values, beliefs, and views about the world could be explored in more depth resulting in what Rubin and Rubin (2012: 95) call an ‘extended conversation’. The purpose of such a conversation is to explore in depth some themes of relevance to the interviewee through their choice of objects. Using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006), we explored the richness, depth, and genuineness of the materials gathered in objectbased online research interviews.

The chapter details the research process, discussing the benefits and challenges of using objects as enhancing tools in social research interviews conducted online. It considers how participants chose their items, how the tool compares with other enhancing tools, and some methodological implications.

Introduction

2020 was a year few will forget. The COVID-19 global pandemic resulted in massive changes to people's lives, particularly in relation to the use of online communication tools. While video conferencing and communication tools had been used before the global 2020 COVID-19 crisis, this increased across all aspects of society, including healthcare (Lee, 2020; Wosik et al, 2020), business (Obrenovic et al, 2020), education (Dhawan, 2020), entertainment and recreation (Agostino, Arnaboldi, and Lampis, 2020; Son et al, 2020b), and for personal use (Farooq, Laato, and Islam, 2020). Schools and universities rapidly shifted to online learning modalities (Garbe et al, 2020; Rapanta et al, 2020). In tertiary education, this presented both challenges and opportunities. One challenge was to continue to support learning in an engaging environment. However, this also provided research opportunities focused on the impact and benefits of online learning as well as opportunities to develop innovative research methodologies aligned to an online world.

This chapter reveals the development of one such methodology, Collaborative AutoNetnography. The development of a Collaborative AutoNetnographic methodology stemmed from an online initiative created to support doctoral students during COVID-19. Discussions by Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidates during online sessions related to the potential of conducting a research project focused on their experiences concerning the initiative.

We begin this chapter by reviewing the context within which the initiative was developed. We then discuss the various individual methodologies that we drew upon to develop Collaborative AutoNetnography and discuss how the research methodology was implemented, including reflections of key enablers, barriers, and ethical aspects.

Background

A key public health response to COVID-19 was to impose physical and social distancing restrictions on all citizens (Lewnard and Lo, 2020). In Australia these restrictions were imposed across the country in late March 2020. These restrictions resulted in people being required to spend much of their time at home, with only some limited opportunities to venture to other locations, primarily for food and medical care (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2020).

Narrations of extraction between North and South are permeated with necessarily troubling metaphors of predatory, life-sucking, monstrosities of ethnographic infestations and extraction from populations in crises. Thinking with such monstrous figures, this chapter explores the potential of research to contribute to or diverge from the continuum of (neo)colonial dispossession, expropriation, and extraction of land, resources, bodies, and knowledges. Reflecting on previous ‘field experience’ and centring the ethical concerns of undertaking ethnography in Guatemala as part of a PhD programme funded from Ireland, I seek to problematise the ways of doing research in the Global South while positioned at a university in the Global North. Specifically, I explore the ethics of embarking on research in the post-colonial, post-conflict context of Guatemala. I question how the neoliberal dynamics embedded in universities of the Global North privilege the metrics of production and publication, fostering a culture where data harvesting/mining, and knowledge extraction from the Global South to the Global North not only persists, but is encouraged (Connell, 2014; Burman, 2018; Cruz and Luke, 2020).

I am particularly attentive to the ethical and methodological challenges of conducting research on sexual and racial violence in contexts where data extraction from victim/survivors of genocide and conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) has, to a large extent, characterised the relationship between the researcher and the researched. Understanding research as another form of intervention that has the potential, not only to do harm, but also to perpetuate the dynamics of exploitation in the Global South, critical post/de/anti-colonial scholars are increasingly insisting on a reflexive ethics which probes the (neo)colonial dynamics of knowledge extraction and production (Cruz and Luke, 2020; Bilgen, Nasir, and Schöneberg, 2021). Their ethical concerns around North– South research dynamics go much further than the bureaucratic form of ethics approval required by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) or Research Ethics Committees (RECs) (Detamore, 2010; Lai, 2020; Millora, Maimunah, and Still, 2020).

Finally, I problematise the imaginary of the field, as ‘elsewhere’ and ‘other’, and the potential for fieldwork in contexts of crises or sustained and persistent conflict to reproduce a (neo)colonial othering. Centring researcher positionality and reflexivity through a politically engaged and relationally entangled (auto)ethnography, I seek to ground my research in decolonial and feminist ethics.