The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 was a challenge for any practitioner intent on engaging in authentic dialogue for people-centered, place-based transformative praxis with the most marginalized in society–be they in Europe or the Majority World. The pandemic called on us to explore new and creative methodological approaches, to find new ways to manage the everyday challenges of project management and facilitation, and to stimulate critical thinking about the ethics and principles of undertaking PAR when travel is curtailed. It also raised important questions about the value of our work, in a context that was possibly altering the precepts of PAR itself, if not the need and reasons for it.

This Research Topic explores how researchers identifying their work as “participatory” adapted to the pandemic. It analyses how remote and virtual ways of conducting fieldwork affect the power imbalances in the researcher-participant relationship, and to what extent the pandemic might foster new opportunities to build capacity to conduct research. It further asks how knowledge co-production, co-facilitation, and co-analysis can be supported remotely, and which tools might be helpful. These questions are highly relevant to all scholar-activists and researcher-practitioners, whether using participatory or non-participatory approaches, and who will need to adapt in an increasingly uncertain future.