Two and half years into the RECLAMA research project and still we have not met each other in person. We have shared tears and laughter, workshops and webinars, and countless Excel spreadsheets, but we have not yet shared a glass of wine and a chance to connect in the same physical space. Zoom has been amazing in allowing us to collaborate effectively, if imperfectly, and plan our activities and – to some extent – has allowed the UK-based members of the team to ‘participate’ in some elements of the project. But in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been a very different project, and the heaviest burdens have fallen on our amazing colleague and research partner, Juana Francis Bone, and her team in Mujeres de Asfalto. Though always conceived as integral to the project, pre-Covid we could not appreciate how fundamental their physical, intellectual, and emotional labour would be to every aspect of the research.
Since our first Zoom calls, pre-Covid, full of excitement for the project and looked forward to working together during the planned trips of the UK team, we have had the chance to reflect a lot as a team on the challenges and discomforts of working remotely as a transnational, multilingual and multi-disciplinary team, especially in the context of a project committed to decolonising, antiracist, and feminist research practices. In particular, the early days of the pandemic gave us an opportunity to carve out space to reflect on our various positionalities and to focus on co-writing an ethics agreement that has provided the basis of all our subsequent interactions, including addressing issues such as access, authorship and intellectual property. This strong foundation for, and commitment to, a non-hierarchical and collaborative approach to our research, has underpinned all elements of the project, and especially how we have worked together as a team, but also provides a starting point for thinking through the multiple challenges of working together entirely virtually.
Whilst there are many advantages to the enforced lack of international travel caused by Covid – climate-related impacts; local ownership of research – there are significant challenges to working in this way, especially with colleagues who have never met in person. In a project with a feminist ethics of care at its centre, the disembodied and largely instrumental nature of Zoom-based interactions is a particular challenge, requiring the investment of additional time and energy to build trusting relationships across languages and cultures. Working across Spanish and English, with Spanish as the principal language for the project, means that at any one time, half the research team are not working in their first language, increasing the likelihood of linguistic and cultural misunderstandings, amplified by the virtual nature of our interactions, and the absence of the usual body language and contextual cues that shape in-person interactions.
The inability of the UK team to travel to Ecuador also puts us at a significant remove from the day-to-day workings of the project, putting additional pressure on colleagues in both Esmeraldas and Quito, and requiring them to take greater responsibility for project delivery but without the autonomy and ownership that they might expect. I recognise that this can sometimes have the effect of reinforcing hierarchies – North/South; white/Black; academic/practitioner – that we have all worked hard to recognise and dismantle throughout the project. In addition to this, the absence of in-between spaces and moments that usually characterise a fieldwork-based research project – moments of waiting, of walking and talking, of sharing a meal at the end of the day, of just being together with colleagues – produces a context where human connections are diminished; the embodied and emotional experience of doing collaborative research is what I have missed the most in these Covid times. As we navigate the complexities of the ongoing pandemic, alongside the recent political upheavals in Ecuador, I hope that we will soon be able to travel to Quito and connect with our wonderful RECLAMA colleagues in person.