Terrains « sans contact » : l’enquête qualitative en sciences sociales pendant la pandémie

This article discusses the adaptation strategies and lessons that enabled ten PhD students from the Centre for International Studies (CERI, CNRS/Sciences Po) to continue their research after the implementation of the Covid-19 lockdown measures. Despite the variety of methods and fields, our research, both in form and substance, has been radically affected by the pandemic. We show how conducting “contactless” research led us to develop alternative methods of data collection, reformulate our research questions and modify our objects of analysis. We posit that qualitative remote research tends to operate an epistemological refocusing, both geographic and institutional, and to distract researchers from unconnected actors as well as informal practices. Finally, we question the heuristic dimension of this methodological “patchwork”, which is contingent to all research in social sciences, and the epistemological value of these alternative methods by formalising them.