A soft systems inquiry into the notion of ‘food deserts’ during the Covid-19 pandemic

The severe restrictions placed upon face-to-face meetings during the Covid pandemic in 2020/2021 created new challenges for the on-going research into food systems in the Portsmouth community. The researchers had planned to use soft action research which involves participants meeting face-to-face. The restrictions that were imposed during the pandemic forbade such meetings and created a new set of issues for the researchers to overcome. In this paper, we describe how these shortcomings were addressed and introduce a novel way of adapting soft action research through the use of Information and Communication Technologies. The lessons learnt from our experiences will help inform researchers and professionals using Soft methods of inquiry and open opportunities for others to explore further the benefits and disadvantages of online investigation.