Research strategy, uncertainty and COVID-19: A conversation

As part of NCRM’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed a project called Changing Research Practices that, over three funding phases between 2020 and 2022, aimed to bring together members of researcher communities to share ideas, support each other, and identify and synthesise rapidly emerging evidence about how to adapt research to the pandemic conditions.

In the third phase, we ran a series of workshops that focused on the theme of uncertainty in research, which had been an important aspect throughout the earlier part of the project. The workshop series involved a small group of participants, five of whom used the last workshop to generate a film of their conversation, which summarises many of the key issues in regards to uncertainty that emerged through the project. In the film, the researchers used a metaphor sketch elicitation method (coincidentally something we had generated for Phase I) to explore uncertainty in research practices and includes contributions from Ned Barker (UCL), Ceri Davies (Natcen), Romina Istratii (SOAS), Olimpia Mosteanu (Social-Life) and Pedro Rothstein (People’s Palace, Queen Mary University).

The video covers a wide of topics in regards to research processes and shows the methodological and ethical considerations that come to the fore in the context of crisis.