Performing Remote Fieldwork in Times of COVID-19 — Experiences from Social-Ecological Research on Land Abandonment
When the global COVID-19 pandemic emerged in March 2020, a total lockdown was imposed that also affected us as researchers. I remember myself watching in disbelief the news of the lockdown and the mandatory obligation of staying at home and doing home office. Personally and because of a privileged circumstance, I adapted quite well to the new situation, creating my new office space at home and sharing common spaces with the rest of my family. However, what I was especially worried about was the cancelation of all fieldwork activities that I had planned for spring, a decision that significantly affected the plans we had made in our research group for the time to come.
My research interests have always been strongly related to my wish to understand how local communities interact with their environment. In the last couple of years, I have centered my research on exploring the effects of land abandonment on local communities and identifying how these changes can be addressed to maintain the socio-cultural values linked with these territories. This research is part of a bigger project called “Landscape Chains”* which covers different case studies across Spain, Morocco, and Portugal. A very particular case study of this research is located in Las Hurdes (Extremadura, Spain), which represents one of the areas of the Iberian Peninsula that have suffered problems of depopulation and farmland abandonment most intensively and in a systematic way.
Las Hurdes is an amazing landscape, consisting of impressive terrace slopes that have been traditionally managed for subsistence agriculture. In these landscapes, culture and agricultural activities are deeply interlinked in such a way that we can talk of biocultural values: Daily life and cultural heritage depend on agriculture and vice versa.
Intense depopulation processes and consequently abandonment of agricultural land are rapidly changing the appearance of the landscape in this area — and, more intensely, the values and traditional knowledge linked to those biocultural practices.
Together with some colleagues, I planned a fieldwork research based on a socio-cultural methodology, aiming to understand better how these landscape changes are affecting local communities. Carrying out a social survey, we sought to investigate how local communities perceive the abandonment of the area and how the values linked with this territory are changing due to landscape changes. However, just after we had worked out all the details to spend a fieldwork season of three months there, the first lockdown was imposed.
At first — and without foreseeing the severity of the pandemic — we postponed the fieldwork for a couple of months, assuming that it could be carried out soon. But after a while it was obvious that it had to be delayed for a much longer time. Once we realized that it was unrealistic to make plans for travels and develop fieldwork ourselves in the near future, we came up with the only possible solution that we could think of if we wanted to maintain our research: to perform the fieldwork remotely.
Rethinking fieldwork in a way to perform it remotely
The fieldwork initially planned consisted of a series of face-to-face surveys in order to understand better how local communities perceive land abandonment and its impacts. We aimed to interview a representative sample of Las Hurdes’ local population (approximately 200 respondents), randomly selecting respondents in open public spaces. Our first step was to contact our local partner at the University of Extremadura, requesting our colleagues to suggest reliable field assistants to us. For me, this was the key part: thanks to our local partner, we contacted three local women with previous experience in research activities, who were available to work with us in the social sampling.
Since the beginning we established a close communication with them: we had several online meetings to introduce them to the project and carried out online trainings to develop the social sampling. Our goal was to have a similar communication to the one we would have had if we were on site and in the field.
Establishing different channels of communication relating to the different levels of fieldwork, we for instance used emails to communicate final details, such as instructions, documents of the survey, materials, etc. A WhatsApp group was set up for our everyday communication; this was meant to be the space for all questions, problems, and daily reports about the work done. Finally, we used different Google Drive documents to regularly update our plans with dates for interviews, hours spent, etc. Furthermore, we defined some clear rules for communication to keep the work flowing. For instance, we stated that an everyday daily report for each field assistant was needed. This way, each of them reported to us via the WhatsApp group on the number of surveys done, the time spent, kilometers of travel, etc., and sent the photos of the paper surveys done every day. Thereby we could start compiling our dataset and simultaneously know the actual pace of work being carried out.
In the end, however, based on the atmosphere of trust established between us, these rules were more flexible. Once the field assistants had some experience, they started to work autonomously, and they were more independent. To us, this was an indicator for reliable fieldwork implementation, because they were able to make their own decisions while we were checking for the quality of the data they compiled.
Challenges experienced
Our fieldwork campaign was developed within 3–4 months, meaning that the availability of our fieldwork assistants varied across the time. We started with three assistants, but after a month we included one more and finally another one since we noticed that the availability of some of them was quite limited. This resulted in more efforts and time to reorganize the work and to provide the necessary training to the new assistants. Although this was rather inconvenient, the training and support was mostly led by the more experienced assistants, showing us again their skills and the responsibility acquired in this job.
On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic was the main challenge and limitation, since we were especially working with local people and some of them were part of the older population. It was quite an advantage to be able to count on local assistants that know the area and its residents — this was fundamental for approaching the local respondents. All interviews were performed in open spaces, maintaining safe security distances and wearing face masks. Although we were a bit skeptic at first about carrying out surveys with local people under these conditions, the fieldwork developed in a quite ‘normal’ way, and most people were happy to answer our survey.
Some advice to coordinate remote fieldwork successfully
(1) Be aware that it will never be the same or comparable to actual fieldwork. In our case, we had visited the area and known it before, so we could easily connect the research questions to the reality of the study site and the local communities. However, if you have not previously been in the area, it can be really challenging to get to know and understand the context. Because of that, it is key to have reliable local partners and researchers in your team, who know the area.
(2) Choose local partners that support the whole research process. This is generally obvious, but for the case of remote work, it will support you in case you do not fully know the context of the area, but also will be crucial when addressing unexpected problems that may arise.
(3) Be realistic about the difficulties of remote coordination. Even if you have clear steps and a detailed plan, difficulties will emerge. Communication will be a particularly risky issue.
(4) Lower your expectations — be aware that you cannot have the control over all the activities in real-time. Make sure that the indications are super clear, and be available for connecting via phone when it is needed. In the end, the assistants on site will be the ones interacting with locals and taking the decisions. Thus, the best asset is to give them the necessary tools and training so that they can take the right decisions.
(5) Finally, working with reliable and trustworthy fieldwork assistants is KEY — but provide space for confidence. The selection of the right people is basic, and again it will be basic that local partners help you in this. However, it is crucial to place enough trust in the assistants so they can carry out their work independently.
All in all, my experience with remote fieldwork was much better than I had expected. We finished the work in the expected time frame, with the expenses approximately estimated, and, much more importantly, having created an exceptional working environment with people whom we had not personally met before. The negative side is not to have had the opportunity to meet in person as a team. Hopefully, we will soon come back to the present fieldwork and will be able to meet our amazing team of local field assistants.
Thanks to Bea, Tamara, Alicia, Elena and Ruth! Without you, our work would not have been possible.
From this point, we are working on the social data analysis and very soon will publish some preliminary results. You will find our results from this fieldwork experience in a follow-up post!
*For more information on our research project Landscape Chains, click here: www.uni-kassel.de/forschung/landscape-chains/.
