From a Back-up Plan to a Purposeful Research Design

Qualitative remote practices remain a grey zone of EU studies’ methodology; conversely, their actual use has become ubiquitous. Increased salience can be attributed to two main factors: the outbreak of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the EU growing interest in digitisation. By choice or by force, qualitative researchers must also adapt to the broader trends of online research. With this piece, based on two EU case studies of elite and expert actors, we hope to provoke some thoughts regarding remote fieldwork, its present and future applications.