Skulking and spying then telling tales

Becoming a walking-writing-researcher

Abstract

I share a different way of writing about research by doing and discussing it. First, the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic forced me to adapt my methods of researching, to catch snippets of data when and where I could, by email, phone, and family chats and then by observing and eavesdropping on passers-by on my daily walks in rural England. Then, to protect identities I adapted my way of writing, crafting partly fictionalised composite stories. I use my short vignettes, Living in Lockdown, to show how I wrote as ‘others’, and changed roles to fully examine my processes-in-action. Writing narratively and ‘telling’ stories to engage my audience, led me to parallels within the theatrical tradition, especially the Method Acting approach of Stella Adler. I also found that the archetypal figure of the flâneur (particularly as conceived by Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin) provided a conceptual framework for my walking/watching practices. He, too, simply wandered, seeing what there was to see, but usually in a city. I use these frameworks to reflect on my own work, drawing on parallel methodologies to show how it constitutes research, and explore the role that writing plays overall.