




































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 4 (2): 149–157, July 2021 

NOTES FROM THE FIELD 

When the “Field” Moves Online: Reflections on 
Virtual Data Collection during COVID-19 

Chandni Singh1, Sheetal Patil2, Prathigna Poonacha3, Maitreyi Koduganti4, 

Swarnika Sharma5 

1. STARTING A MULTI–COUNTRY RESEARCH PROJECT 
DURING A PANDEMIC  

At the start of 2020, we were enthusiastic about beginning a multi-country, 
interdisciplinary research project titled “Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture 
as Green Infrastructure” (UPAGrI). Examining the sustainability and social 
well-being outcomes of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA), the project 
aims to develop empirical evidence on UPA drivers, practices, and 
outcomes in rapidly growing cities and towns in India and Tanzania.6  

                                                        
1 Researcher and faculty member, School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute 
for Human Settlements (IIHS), 16th Cross Rd, Sadashiva Nagar, Armane Nagar, Bengaluru, 
Karnataka – 560080; csingh@iihs.ac.in. 

2  Researcher at the School of Development of Azim Premji University, Survey No 66, 
Burugunte Village, Bikkanahalli Main Rd, Sarjapura, Bengaluru, Karnataka– 562125; 
sheetal.patil@apu.edu.in.      

3 Researcher and faculty member at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), 16th 
Cross Rd, Sadashiva Nagar, Armane Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka – 560080; 
ppoonacha@iihs.ac.in. 

4 Researcher with the climate team at IIHS, 16th Cross Rd, Sadashiva Nagar, Armane Nagar, 
Bengaluru, Karnataka – 560080; kvmaitreyi@iihs.ac.in. 

5 Researcher, Indian Institute for Human Settlements, 16th Cross Rd, Sadashiva Nagar, 
Armane Nagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka – 560080; swarnikas@iihs.ac.in.  

Copyright © Singh, Patil, Poonacha, Koduganti and Sharma 2021. Released under Creative 

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the 

author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 

Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v4i2.414  

6 Pune and Bengaluru in India, and Dar es Salaam and Morogoro in Tanzania. See the 
UPIGrI website for further details: https://upagri.wixsite.com/up-agri.  

mailto:csingh@iihs.ac.in
mailto:sheetal.patil@apu.edu.in
mailto:ppoonacha@iihs.ac.in
mailto:kvmaitreyi@iihs.ac.in
mailto:swarnikas@iihs.ac.in
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v4i2.414
https://upagri.wixsite.com/up-agri


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [150] 

We were to begin scoping visits in February 2020 and have a project kick-
off meeting in March, where researchers from Tanzania, India, and the UK 
would meet to conceptualize and operationalize the project, translating the 
ambitious proposal to actual research design and plans for research impact. 
However, as the spread of COVID-19 escalated into a pandemic, our plans 
were upended. Scoping visits, the essential first steps to more immersive, 
city-specific, multi-stakeholder engagement, became impossible. The project 
kick-off meeting was postponed and moved online.  

The pandemic and the restrictions that came with it forced us to adjust to 
new ways of working and collaborating: we needed to completely reorient 
our approach to research and data collection. This field note describes our 
experiences with online data collection in Pune and Bengaluru during the 
first year of UPAGrI, January 2020–2021. We reflect on our 
methodological approach to, and experiments in, online data collection; the 
benefits and drawbacks of this approach; and the lessons others exploring 
online fieldwork might take away from our experiences. 

 2. PIVOTING, SLOWLY  

Within three weeks of starting scoping visits and preliminary interviews 
with urban farmers in Bengaluru, we had to halt field visits because of 
India’s national lockdown, which started on March 25, 2020. As we were 
uncertain about how long the lockdown would be extended for, fieldwork 
was put on hold indefinitely. However, since the project had just begun, we 
had the option of redesigning our plans. Reorienting to the new normal was 
not easy, personally or professionally. Given that the project envisaged 
collecting data through farm visits, participant observation, in-person 
farmer interviews, and farmer diaries, the inability to travel to the field felt 
crippling. Additionally, working from home, with its blurred work–life 
boundaries and increased care duties, presented further challenges.     

In April 2020, we pivoted our approach, albeit slowly. We made progress 
on desk-based outputs, such as a systematic literature review that was a 
planned project output meant to be concurrent to the scoping visits. 
However, the inability to whet our readings with field visits was somewhat 
discouraging. As India’s lockdowns continued into June, in-person field 
engagement remained uncertain. Our request to the funding agency, the 
British Academy, for an extension was granted, giving us much-needed 
breathing space. 

While the pandemic restricted primary data collection, it offered new 
avenues of engagement. In July 2020, we took stock of alternate ways of 
engaging with stakeholders and conducting farmer interviews, drawing on 
resources such as the LSE Digital Ethnography Collective Reading List 



[151] Chandni Singh, Sheetal Patil, Prathigna Poonacha, Maitreyi Koduganti, Swarnika Sharma 

(Glatt and Spector 2020) and “Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic” (Lupton 
2020). We decided to use telephonic and online interviews to converse with 
urban farmers. Coincidentally, the pandemic facilitated this shift to virtual 
fieldwork since people from varied locations, ages, and income groups in 
India were increasingly moving to online platforms and social media for 
work and entertainment (Pinto 2020).  

2. FROM IN-FIELD TO ON-SCREEN: EXPERIENCES WITH 
MOVING THE FIELD ONLINE 

In July 2020, we revisited stakeholder lists developed between February and 
March 2020 and contacted potential respondents over email, phone, and 
social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Given the exploratory 
nature of the study, we used snowball sampling that is commonly used to 
identify “hidden populations” (Johnson 2014). Thus, we drew on our 
stakeholder lists for the initial conversations and then contacted other 
urban farmers suggested by interviewees.  

In most cases, urban farmers readily agreed to interviews7 since they were 
used to online interactions and training, even before the pandemic (Desai 
2020; Srinath 2020). For government officials and institutional respondents, 
we sent interview requests via email, mirroring the more formal access 
practices typically used for particular stakeholders. When it came to the 
actual interviews, we intentionally experimented with various platforms 
including Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, and sometimes WhatsApp. This 
plurality was necessary to meet various respondents’ preferences.  

Urban farms and gardens in Bengaluru and Pune are typically located in and 
around peoples’ homes, making these homes the “field”. This meant that 
during interviews, respondents often gave us virtual tours of their balconies 
and terraces, rainwater harvesting setups, and composting containers. These 
interactions expanded our understanding of “being in the field” to 
something beyond “spending long periods of time in a site” and added to 
our understanding of the field as “multidimensional and socially 
constructed space” (here, homes and gardens) (Ramesh 2020: 30). Given 
the exploratory nature of our research, the interviews were semi-structured 
and conversational, with several interviews continuing beyond the 
scheduled duration. Respondents often shared photographs and videos of 
their gardens days and weeks after the interviews. Many chose to speak to 

                                                        
7 In two cases, people we contacted were unable to set up online interviews because they felt 
farm visits would be more suitable to demonstrate the practices and outcomes of urban 
agriculture. For these cases (which were in Bengaluru), we conducted field visits in January 
2021, after travel restrictions had eased.  



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [152] 

us multiple times to discuss other aspects of their urban farming practices, 
mirroring the practice of repeat visits, commonly seen in traditional 
fieldwork.  

This expansion of the field was also experiential—the field, typically 
understood as “out there” (Bengtsson 2014; Howlett 2021) also became “in 
here” as we conducted interviews from our home. A pressure cooker going 
off or a child taking online classes in the background were common for 
both interviewers and respondents, and soon, our families and personal 
lives became part of the “field”. This shared experience of the pandemic 
equalized the interviewer–respondent relationship. People opened up in 
conversations more readily than they might have if we had gone as 
“professionals” to meet “respondents” in the “field” (their homes).  

 

Figure 1: Observing Farming Practices in a Community Farm in Pune Virtually 
with Mr Dyaneshwar Bodke, Founder of Abhinav Farmers Club 
Source: Authors 

One of the luxuries of qualitative fieldwork, and which also makes it so 
valuable, is the opportunity to construct “ethnographic relationships” 
(Cavanagh 2016, 27), i.e., form friendships and develop ethical rules of 
engagement. Pivoting to online data collection did hamper initial cues and 



[153] Chandni Singh, Sheetal Patil, Prathigna Poonacha, Maitreyi Koduganti, Swarnika Sharma 

more familiar processes of rapport-building, but it also led to other forms 
of insightful 8  engagement. The conversations also helped us build 
meaningful relationships: several older respondents said the conversations 
allowed them to reflect on decades of farming, while others noted that the 
discussions made them see their gardens in a new light.  

 

Figure 2: Visiting a Terrace Garden in Bengaluru Virtually  
Source: Authors 

Along with these positive experiences, we also faced challenges. First, 
irregular internet connectivity and power cuts hampered the conversations, 
and sometimes elderly respondents had trouble logging into online 
meetings. In such cases, we would shift to audio calls over WhatsApp, as all 
respondents were familiar with the app. Second, we were unable to speak to 
as many government officials as we had hoped, in part because they had 
additional COVID responsibilities. Third, most of the conversations were 
only with the respondent unlike typical in-person fieldwork where 
researchers have the opportunity to talk to respondents’ colleagues and/or 

                                                        
8 For example, in August 2020, the research team and four urban farmers conducted an 
online session “Who Feeds Bengaluru?” to discuss the multidimensional benefits of urban 
agriculture. In February 2021, as part of The Nature of Cities Festival, three urban farmers 
co-hosted a virtual field trip with the research team titled “Garden City’s Farming Habits: A 
Field Tour in Bengaluru, India”.  



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [154] 

family members. Finally, the online nature of the interviews may have led to 
a homogenisation of respondents: they were middle-class, educated urban 
farmers. None of our respondents was from low-income informal 
settlements.9   

Over three months, between August and October 2020, we successfully 
conducted 51 interviews with a variety of urban farmers, perhaps exceeding 
what we could have done in our scoping visits.  

3. LESSONS FOR MOVING THE FIELD ONLINE     

Confronted with the “unprecedented nature” of the COVID-19 pandemic, 
many researchers have called for pragmatism around meeting pre–
pandemic research objectives, becoming methodologically agile, and 
avoiding being extractive or exacerbating burdens on community partners 
and key informants (Ahmed et al. 2020; Dodds and Hess 2020). Below are 
key takeaways10 from our experience of shifting to online data collection:   

 Online does not mean anything goes: Using technology to 
conduct interviews was not as disruptive as we had expected. A few 
months into the pandemic, most of our respondents were well-
versed in using online platforms. In situations where this was a 
problem, especially with older respondents, we used options such 
as phone calls. Second, we followed rigorous and ethical research 
procedures, just as we would have for in-field data collection. We 
decided on interview durations while setting up interviews and 
asked respondents for permission to record and take photographs. 
Although data collection moved online, we intentionally reminded 
ourselves to be mindful of peoples’ time and privacy. One might 

                                                        
9 Our desk-based review of literature and media articles tended to only report urban farming 
from middle and upper-middle class city dwellers. This made it difficult to identify possible 
respondents for remote interviews from low-income settlements. In subsequent field visits, 
we aim to address this by undertaking transect walks and participant observation in low-
income settlements to make the narratives of urban agriculture more inclusive and 
representative.  

10 We recognize that our experience is mediated by certain privileges—the project had steady 
funding and the funding agency granted us flexibility by giving us a one-year, no-cost 
extension. Further, all team members were well-versed in using online platforms since those 
were used for other international projects. The different teams also had a good working 
relationship prior to the shift online and had adequate supporting structures (laptops, space 
to work from home, and fast internet to conduct interviews). Also, the nature of the field as 
primarily urban, where respondents were typically familiar with technology and could afford 
stable internet connections, and our methodological approach being qualitative and open-
ended, also enabled us to “pivot” to online data collection through trial and error.  



[155] Chandni Singh, Sheetal Patil, Prathigna Poonacha, Maitreyi Koduganti, Swarnika Sharma 

have to pay additional attention to these practices as personal and 
professional boundaries tend to blur when working online.  

 There is no travel, but everything takes longer: While almost 
no time was spent travelling to the field, we found time 
management was still essential. Instead of interviewee fatigue, we 
often faced interviewer fatigue and had to experiment with 
interview frequency and duration. Overall, we moved from doing 
three interviews a day to just doing one so that transcripts and 
follow up questions/reflections could be written up. An hour-long 
interview typically worked best, though some respondents were 
more keen to converse and those conversations could go on for up 
to an hour and a half. If we saw signs of fatigue or distraction, we 
amended the interview length with the permission of the 
interviewee.    

 Acknowledge ethnographic hits and misses: Ethnographic 
methods involve “hanging out”, participant observation, informal 
conversations, and interacting with people other than the identified 
respondents. This was not possible in our online interviews. 
However, we found that repeat interviews and follow-ups through 
phone and email built a successful rapport that led to further 
conversations and meaningful bonds and eventually helped us 
establish a relationship with respondents. Months after the online 
interviews, we visited sites and enriched our online interactions, 
thus developing “thick” data.      

 Remote work needs more communication: Typically, fieldwork 
involves reflective conversations within the research team, where 
one would go over the day’s interviews, discuss leads and ideas, and 
plan for the next day. Working remotely, we found that the project 
team had to make space and time to connect more frequently. A 
15-minute conservation right after an interview for quick 
reflection-sharing as well as additional bi-weekly discussions helped 
us share emerging findings and plan for future interviews. These 
additional meetings, though often exhausting, were essential and 
also made us aware of each other’s personal situations, helping 
build more empathy and understanding within the team.  

As “the field” moves online, experimenting with hybrid methods of in-
person and online data collection are increasingly important. With travel 
restrictions easing in India, we are beginning to supplement current online 
data collection with immersive field visits. The pivot to online data 
collection was critical to continuing our research. The lessons from this 
online mode of working and data collection are instructive in flexible 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [156] 

methodologies, in opening up alternate spaces, and in reducing travel and 
associated carbon footprints. It has, for us, expanded the meaning and 
materiality of the term “field” and challenged normative ideas of data 
collection as only being embedded and in-person.  

 
REFERENCES 
Ahmed, Nabila, Sally Cawood, Sarita Panday, Megnaa Mehtta, Glyn Williams, Jiban 
Kumar Karki, and Ankit Kumar. 2020. "Should Our Academic Approach towards 
Researching South Asia Change Due to COVID-19?" LSE Blog. 
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2020/08/21/should-our-academic-approach-
towards-researching-south-asia-change-due-to-covid-19/ 

Bengtsson, Stina. 2014. “Faraway, So Close! Proximity and Distance in 
Ethnography Online.” Media, Culture & Society 36 (6): 862–877. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443714531195 

Cavanagh, Tom. 2016. “Constructing Ethnographic Relationships: Reflections on 
Key Issues and Struggles in the Field.” Waikato Journal of Education 11(1). 
https://doi.org/10.15663/wje.v11i1.317  

Desai, Ketaki. 2020. “Millennials’ Love for Gardening Is Blooming in a Big Way.” 
Times of India, May 10, 2020. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-
times/millennials-love-for-gardening-is-blooming-in-a-big-
way/articleshow/75650556.cms  

Dodds, Sarah, and Alexandra Claudia Hess. 2020. “Adapting Research 
Methodology during COVID-19: Lessons for Transformative Service Research.” 
Journal of Service Management (ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-05-
2020-0153 

Glatt, Zoe, and Branwen Spector. 2020. “Digital Ethnography Collective Reading 
List.” https://zoeglatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/LSE-Digital-
Ethnography-Collective-Reading-List-March-2020.pdf 

Howlett, Marnie. 2021. “Looking at the ‘Field’ through a Zoom Lens: 
Methodological Reflections on Conducting Online Research during a Global 
Pandemic.” Qualitative Research: 146879412098569. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120985691  

Johnson, Timothy P. 2014. “Snowball Sampling: Introduction.” Wiley StatsRef: 
Statistics Reference Online. 
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118445112.stat05720  

Lupton, Deborah. 2020. “Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic (Crowd-Sourced 
Document).” 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clGjGABB2h2qbduTgfqribHmog9B6P0
NvMgVuiHZCl8/edit?ts=5e88ae0a# 

Pinto, Viveat Susan. 2020. “Covid-19 Lockdown Effect: Every Second Indian Now 
on Internet in Cities.” Business Standard, May 9, 2020. https://www.business-
standard.com/article/economy-policy/covid-19-lockdown-effect-every-second-
indian-now-on-internet-in-cities-120050801805_1.html  

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2020/08/21/should-our-academic-approach-towards-researching-south-asia-change-due-to-covid-19/
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2020/08/21/should-our-academic-approach-towards-researching-south-asia-change-due-to-covid-19/
https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443714531195
https://doi.org/10.15663/wje.v11i1.317
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/millennials-love-for-gardening-is-blooming-in-a-big-way/articleshow/75650556.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/millennials-love-for-gardening-is-blooming-in-a-big-way/articleshow/75650556.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/millennials-love-for-gardening-is-blooming-in-a-big-way/articleshow/75650556.cms
https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-05-2020-0153
https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-05-2020-0153
https://zoeglatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/LSE-Digital-Ethnography-Collective-Reading-List-March-2020.pdf
https://zoeglatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/LSE-Digital-Ethnography-Collective-Reading-List-March-2020.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120985691
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118445112.stat05720
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clGjGABB2h2qbduTgfqribHmog9B6P0NvMgVuiHZCl8/edit?ts=5e88ae0a
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clGjGABB2h2qbduTgfqribHmog9B6P0NvMgVuiHZCl8/edit?ts=5e88ae0a
https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/covid-19-lockdown-effect-every-second-indian-now-on-internet-in-cities-120050801805_1.html
https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/covid-19-lockdown-effect-every-second-indian-now-on-internet-in-cities-120050801805_1.html
https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/covid-19-lockdown-effect-every-second-indian-now-on-internet-in-cities-120050801805_1.html


[157] Chandni Singh, Sheetal Patil, Prathigna Poonacha, Maitreyi Koduganti, Swarnika Sharma 

Ramesh, Madhuri. 2020. “A Call to Redefine ‘the Field’ in Nature Conservation 
Studies in India.” Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 3(2): 27–31. 
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i2.123.  

Srinath, Shruthi. 2020. “Look Up, the Terraces Thrive.” Deccan Herald, May 8, 2020 
https://www.deccanherald.com/spectrum/look-up-the-terraces-thrive-
835229.html 

 

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i2.123
https://www.deccanherald.com/spectrum/look-up-the-terraces-thrive-835229.html
https://www.deccanherald.com/spectrum/look-up-the-terraces-thrive-835229.html

