Shifting intimacies: mobile dating during a pandemic
Research from the Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Health is always topical and relevant – and responds quickly and innovatively to community and world events. As part of a three-part series, we’re sharing how some of our researchers responded to COVID-19.
Dr Ally Gibson had just started work on a proposal to explore how people use mobile dating across different age groups when the COVID-19 pandemic hit New Zealand.
As the country navigated a complete lockdown, the opportunity to reframe her project in a new context presented itself.
“All of a sudden, we had people talking on dating apps about whether they would wear masks when they met in person, or when their last COVID-19 test was. I realised I couldn’t not think of this project through the lens of the pandemic,” she says.
“I want to understand how people are negotiating different perceptions of risk and of the virus in their dating experiences.”
Dr Gibson’s work is funded by a Marsden Fast-Start Grant. She will explore meanings, activities, and stories attached to using dating technologies while living through a pandemic. The research will span people from different age groups, ethnicities, sexualities, and other backgrounds within Aotearoa New Zealand.
She says it is a significant time to be an early career researcher in the field, with the pandemic bringing issues of health and wellbeing to the foreground on a national and international level, and academic response being of huge importance.
“I think people were seeking a deep connection through mobile dating even more so, and perhaps even attaching more meaning to it,” she says.
“Everything I am interested in researching has come to the fore. We are now looking at these issues as people deal with them in real time.”
For more on other researchers and research opportunities in the Faculty of Health, read our recent Research Highlights publication.