My recent paper published in the journal, Area, provides my reflections on doing virtual qualitative research and remote fieldwork on the experiences of older people living with incontinence and their caregivers in humanitarian settings in Malawi and Ethiopia, for a Humanitarian Innovation Fund-funded Elhra project with Oxfam GB, HelpAge International and the Sanitation Learning Hub at the Institute of Development Studies as a researcher with Cerebral Palsy.
The paper, ‘A less muddy glee? Perspectives from a disabled researcher in the era of virtual global south fieldwork’, looks back at a paper written about the role of women in physical geography fieldwork in 2004 called ‘Muddy glee’. I use this article to explore new forms of ‘muddiness’ in doing online fieldwork in 2021, looking at the challenges it brings in not being able to meet research participants, see the field sites and navigating barriers to understanding my speech that a team with two languages face, as well as the opportunities remote fieldwork can bring for including women with disabilities in global south fieldwork in the future.
The paper can be accessed here.