Researching Place during a Pandemic: Ex Situ Listening

Research practices have been adapted and adjusted to continue researching place during the global pandemic. This paper will explore this pandemic impact on research through reflecting on the experiences of carrying out doctoral place-based research during 2020. Whilst developing a socio-sonic-mobile methodology, one of the main adaptations has been new configurations of technology that enable remote research. These conditions force the researcher into an unintended ‘ex situ’ position. Within these methods and emerging practices, technology and the ‘ex situ’ researcher positionality are entangled in complex ways. In order to explore this entanglement, a sound collage has been created from the behind-the-scenes audio material recorded whilst carrying out research remotely. The reader is invited to listen to this Ex Situ Listening sound piece before critical reflections are shared about participatory, remotely-supported research practices. Applying the idea of audio recordings as ‘self-reflexive narratives’ (Anderson and Tullis 2016), three journeys are identified in the making of and listening-back to this sound piece: the research, methods and research practice journeys. The sound collage is offered as a way of sonically exploring ‘ex situ’ listening research practices and to open-up questions about the impact of the pandemic on future research practices.