At the interstices of ethics, the digital and research in higher education

What members of research ethics committees learnt about themselves, their committees and their institutions from the ‘pivot’ online during the pandemic should be of interest to scholars of, and practitioners within, education systems. State restrictions led to sudden increases in digital technologies for various aspects of research practice, including field work, data processing, and administration. Digital tools were introduced not only into university systems, but also the lives of novice and experience researchers, at unprecedented speed and scale. Across the world, these were largely commissioned without the involvement of expert research communities and without enablement for such communities to interrogate the wide-reaching implications of utilising products designed for commercial purposes.