I’m pleased to share that my latest paper has been published in Qualitative Research:
“Preparatory Participation as Method: Reconceptualising Pre-Fieldwork Through Embodied and Relational Practice”
You can read the full paper here:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14687941261442152
When Does Research Actually Begin?
We often talk about research as though it begins when fieldwork starts. When interviews are scheduled, ethics are approved, or data collection formally begins.
But in practice, research often starts much earlier.
This paper grew from reflecting on the kinds of preparation that shaped my own doctoral research before I ever entered the water with participants.
That included volunteering with visually impaired communities, completing sighted-guide training, and undertaking open water safety certification. These were not tasks required by a methodology checklist. They were practical, embodied ways of learning how to move more responsibly within the spaces, relationships, and environments my research would depend on.
Naming Something Many Researchers Already Do
The paper introduces the concept of preparatory participation as a way of recognising this kind of early research labour.
This is not about proposing a brand-new method.
Instead, it offers language for something many researchers likely already do in different ways. Spending time learning a community context. Building practical knowledge. Developing confidence in an environment. Understanding access needs. Learning where your own assumptions sit. Becoming more aware of interdependence, responsibility, and risk.
These things shape research long before formal data collection begins.
Research Is More Than Data Collection
My doctoral work explores visually impaired people’s experiences of blue spaces, particularly swimming in coastal and aquatic environments.
Because of the nature of this work, preparation could not be purely theoretical. It needed to be practical, relational, and embodied.
How do you research swimming if you are unfamiliar with open water safety? How do you think carefully about access and guidance if you have never undertaken sighted-guide training? How do you enter relational research spaces responsibly if you have not spent time understanding the environments and communities involved?
These are the kinds of questions the paper explores.
Why This Matters
This matters because research methods are often written about through neat stages and formal processes, while much of the work that makes meaningful research possible happens in less visible ways.
That preparation may unfold across weeks, months, years, or through experiences researchers bring with them over a lifetime.
Recognising this labour matters, particularly for research involving access, care, embodied risk, and close relational work.
I hope the paper speaks not only to researchers working in ethnography or qualitative inquiry, but to anyone who has ever felt that some of the most important parts of research happened before the “official” work was supposed to begin.
As always, I remain incredibly grateful to the people, spaces, and conversations that continue to shape this work.
