Contributing to the “Covid-19 and the Social Sciences” essay series, Oscar Abedi, Maria Eriksson Baaz, David Mwambari, Swati Parashar, Anju Oseema Maria Toppo, and James Vincent outline various paths toward reducing field research’s potential for exploitation, especially that of Global South collaborators. The pandemic has highlighted inequalities and immobility that differently affect facilitating researchers and contracting researchers. In response, the authors identify key issues that institutions, publishers, and individual researchers must reflect on in order to counteract these imbalances—and take advantage of an opportunity to fundamentally transform field research into collaborative knowledge production.
David Mwambari
David Mwambari is a lecturer in African security and leadership studies at the African Leadership Centre (ALC) in the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy at King’s College London (UK). He is a by-fellow at Churchill College Cambridge University (2019–2020) and a fellow of the CODESRIA African Academic Diaspora. His publications have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, including International Journal of Qualitative Methods, African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review, Memory Studies, and the Journal Leadership of Leadership and Developing Societies. He is a coeditor of Beyond History: African Agency in Development, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution (coedited with Elijah Nyaga and Aleksi Ylönen; Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).