This IQAS issue explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research practices, focusing on the challenges researchers from across Asia and Europe with diverse (inter-)disciplinary angles and positionalities faced while adapting to digitally-mediated research methods. It highlights how the pandemic accelerated the shift to online research, prompting changes in data collection, researcher positionality, and engagement with marginalized groups. The articles document negotiations, discussions and choices that they made in unplanned situations. The issue discusses, through a collaborative exchange, the methodological, ethical, and personal issues that arose in fieldwork, emphasizing the need for updated skills and research designs in the digital era. The reflections presented do not offer fixed solutions but contribute to an evolving discourse on conducting research in a rapidly changing, connected world.
Find the new issue here (Open Access).
Selected articles
Navigating the Disrupted Field: Researching Education in Indonesia during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Mutmainna Syam, Dissa Paputungan-Engelhardt
Conducting Qualitative Interviews Online and In-person: Issues of Rapport Building and Trust
Rahat Shah
IQAS (International Quarterly for Asian Studies) has been Germany's leading academic journal on Asia since 1970. It provides a forum for multidisciplinary research on current and historical topics relevant to politics, economics and society in contemporary Asia. It seeks to make the results of social science research on Asia known to a broader public discourse about Asia. The contributions are intended for a public aware that the world's regions and cultures have always been interlinked and, thus, need to be understood in relation to one another. The journal appears quarterly or semi-annually as a double issue in print and an open-access version. The journal is published by the ABI.
All issues can be found on the website of IQAS.