Staying on topic: doing research between improvisation and systematisation

Doing scientific research is, in theory, a systematic and well-organised enterprise. Field works are planned, interview guides are prepared, participants are selected. And, if the job was done well, data is collected, analysed, interpreted in a proper, clean, scientific manner. In reality, however, things often go astray: field works get cancelled, interviews get side-tracked and participants drop out. The investigation of human lives, as it turns out, cannot do away with the messiness of human lives. In such cases, researchers must adapt to the new situation and yet to stay on topic: in one word, they need to improvise. How, then, does research remain scientific? In this chapter, I will argue that it is not planning, organisation or control that make good academic work, and that it is often in the unexpected that the most interesting results emerge. What matters, however, is what is done afterwards; how hunches and surprises are turned into systematic investigations, analyses and interpretations. This argument will be illustrated with the story of an ‘impromptu’ fieldwork in Brussels and its unpredictable consequences; or, rather, how staying on topic requires one to systematically stray away from it.