Covid-19 is an unprecedented moment, halting life as we know it. For the global development community, the effects have been profound. Several NGOs have had to scale back or completely stop their operations overseas, while local actors and civil society are rapidly organising to respond to the crisis through their own creative ways.
For those who work in international development think tanks, research that requires fieldwork has been paused and left us fully reliant on local researchers. That has helped us recognise that ‘normal was the problem’. The ways in which we used to work and conduct research in development reproduced colonial practices that silence our research partners and ultimately our participants. By disrupting traditional research and development practices, Covid-19 could offer us an opportunity to put that right.