As an emerging scholar committed to social justice and anti-oppressive praxis, I entered my master’s program in Geography at York University, Toronto, with the goal of contributing to new theoretical insights and meaningful outcomes for research participants in Thailand. While initially the concept of communityengaged research appeared to alleviate the tensions between these two goals, the realities of the university’s constraints on graduate student research coupled with those of the COVID-19 pandemic have made it clear that this endeavor would not be straightforward. The inherent messiness of balancing academic matters (e.g., contributing to new theory and demonstrating an adequate level of rigor) with social justice concerns (e.g., eliminating epistemological violence and contributing meaningful outcomes for research participants) in community-engaged research has only intensified as COVID-19 has reconfigured our social relations, exacerbating existing inequities and restricting our social mobility, particularly across international borders. In this reflection, I consider how remotely collaborating with local research assistants in my own graduate research project typifies these tensions. More specifically, I posit that the COVID-19 pandemic has further underscored the importance of researchers, particularly white men researchers such as myself, to be willing to consistently re-evaluate our projects, and embrace flexibility, accountability, and the removal of ego from our work.
