Findings: Impact on Research

Participants raised a broad range of issues regarding the impact of COVID-19 on their research. These were grouped into two main themes- impacts on research design and impacts on access to support with their research.

• 43% of respondents experienced impacts on their research design due to disruptions to chosen method. This included disruptions to fieldwork, including conducting interviews and workshops, and losing physical access to international data repositories. Many respondents explained that interviews and workshops could not be moved online due to the sensitive nature of the research.

• 13% of respondents identified that their research had been disrupted due to not being able to access key resources. This resulted in a detrimental impact on their research capacity even in the absence of a fieldwork component in their research design.

• 22% of respondents emphasised that reduced access to support was impacting their research. In many cases, this manifested in the form of reduced supervision, as supervisors were also facing COVID-19 related disruptions. In other cases, it related to reduced access to in-person peer support, such as writing groups.

Over half of respondents suffered direct impacts to their PhD research process, due to either impacts on empirical data collection or access to essential resources.

“Focus groups have been postponed."

“inability to conduct Archival research."

Further, many participants were also facing delays in receiving feedback from supervisors and had reduced access to peer support networks to fill this gap. Some students in earlier stages of earlier in their candidature (first and second year) reported that significant portions of their PhD projects would have to be re-designed due to data collection issues.

Participants expressed a significant degree of concern and uncertainty about the future of their research. Some felt optimistic that if things returned to normal in 3-4 months, their topics would be salvageable. However, many recognised that the long-term disruptions of the pandemic would require substantial re-working of their research design.

Several participants also noted that they were researching difficult and sensitive topics. Engaging with these topics with the added anxiety due to COVID-19 was near impossible for these participants. Further, engaging in data collection would not be appropriate on these topics at this time.