In a follow up to his earlier coauthored piece on resuming research during the Covid-19 pandemic, Douglas Rogers describes how Yale University created a process to review and approve research projects through “a researcher-facing, education-focused, peer-reviewed process that is informed by public health guidance.” Avoiding blanket policies restricting or banning research, Rogers explains the steps taken by Yale, and the subcommittee he chaired in particular, to ensure a safe resumption of field research, which can hopefully guide other institutions.

In their contribution to the “Covid-19 and the Social Sciences” series, Elisabeth Jean Wood, Douglas Rogers, K. Sivaramakrishnan, and Rene Almeling explain that for the foreseeable future, research in many field sites will face complex ethical and logistical challenges, and argue that immersive ethnographic field research will likely be among the last areas of academic research to resume something resembling its prepandemic rhythms. They reflect on the necessary conditions for the resumption of US-based or international field research and propose a series of principles that academic institutions can follow in order to avoid promulgating unresponsive, blanket policies.