This chapter applies ethics of care to the process of doing research. We draw on experiential knowledge to tell the stories shared with us by the people we spoke to for this book about research projects guided by, and reflected on, using the ethics of care. During research projects, unpredictable situations can arise that may require revisions to the research plan, challenge the fundamental assumptions that inform the research, or uncover more significant situations that require attention. Changes to the project may be externally influenced, for example by ethics committees or other governance groups requesting alterations to the research. More personal reactions to the research also occur, and attention to this experience influences how the research is practised, and how to care for the people involved. At each turn, a response is needed that builds trust and solidarity, and makes space for reflexivity. In the last chapter we discussed getting started on research projects and in the next chapter we discuss the later stages of research – analysis, dissemination and endings; this chapter is about refining the project, collecting data, initial reactions and observations, and working these through together.

There are two parts to this chapter. The first is about how the process of doing the research is as important as the outcomes and, indeed, itself produces what we might think of as either outcomes or legacies of the research. We discuss how the ethics of care has guided these processes of research, and the sorts of thinking used to traverse the situated complexities we are likely to encounter. The second part is about caring for the people involved, and how to engage care for people in research projects they take part in. We discuss how entanglements, or inextricable interdependencies (Kittay, 2015), produce insightful moments of knowledge, and that this is only possible when good relationships are sustained, and sometimes repaired when we work together in research projects. We reflect on what to do when things are not going well, and how to avoid relationships being jeopardised. This is not to say that people stay in research projects at all costs, but that the decisions about whether to continue or leave the research are made together with care and responsibility to each other.