Empirical research in times of lockdown

DISTRACT researchers presented experiences from their research using digital and remote methods and techniques during the corona lockdown to students from the master's programmes in Global Development and Anthropology.

Many students on both of these programmes will need to find alternative ways of doing empirical research for their MA thesis projects in the near future, which for most would otherwise have entailed doing classical ethnographic fieldwork. As such "In Real Life" research is either impossible or ethically questionable from a public health standpoint, students (and researchers) are finding ways to collect data via online or remote means.

Among the presenters were DISTRACT members Eva Iris Otto, who presented her experiences with doing both physical and online fieldwork in an app developer company. Also, Kristoffer Albris presented the so-called "logbook study", on young people's everyday habits during the first lockdown in 2020, which was a collaboration with Emilie Munch Gregersen, Sofie Læbo Astrupgaard, Malene Hornstrup Jespersen, Eva Iris Otto and Tobias Priesholm Gårdhus.