Exploring the use of interviews as a legal methodology in IP research, particularly in the context of field engagement with traditional artisan communities, Niharika Salar shares a reflective piece based on her fieldwork experience as part of her ongoing PhD project. Niharika is a Doctoral Candidate at Queen’s University Belfast, and her previous posts can be accessed here and here.
[Long post ahead]
Methodological Reflections: The “How” of doing Interviews in IP legal Research
By Niharika Salar
In IP legal research, we are often conditioned to read the world through a framework that has been defined for us, usually made of statutes, global convention provisions, case law, and so on. But what happens when the law is more than just a piece of paper, maybe a living, breathing experience? What happens when it travels through not just a big corporate office but to a small workshop in a craft cluster, where artisans wait anxiously for a GI certificate that may or may not change their lives?
This short reflection brings together some ongoing thoughts from my PhD fieldwork on using interviews in IP law research. My work, exploring what GI law actually does for Indian craft communities, centres on a seemingly simple question: what do people in specific craft clusters think of GI tags? And yet, this simplicity is not very explored. Public perceptions of IP law, shaped by media, often focus on piracy, celebrity disputes, or the entertainment industry, overlooking its broader social dimensions. Many assume IP lives in boardrooms, not in daily life, and that its impact is limited to corporate innovation. But what about lived experience? Does the presence, or the absence, of IP protection shift how communities see themselves, or are seen by others? I started looking for tools that would allow me to speak to people, not just about the law, but around it. Could it be interviews? Focus groups? Something in between?
Why Interviews?
I eventually settled on interviews, though not without hesitation. After all, interviews come in many forms as they could be ethnographic, narrative, discursive, semi-structured, and so much more. The more I read, the more I realised that it’s nearly impossible to know which ‘type’ I may end up using until I am already in the field. In my case, I probably used a mix of everything, which was guided by instinct more than design. And that, too, became part of the learning.
Legal research tends to find more value in tangible evidence. But for communities and their members, whose relationship with the law is shaped by oral histories and intergenerational skill-sharing, interviews become a necessary mode of inquiry. They allowed me to access perspectives that were either not present or were flattened in official GI applications or other related promotional material.
The Million-Dollar Question: What am I Going to Ask
Building research instruments through a questionnaire from scratch is no easy task, and it is difficult to locate the precise starting point. Should I ask people directly about GI tags? But how can I assume they even know what a GI tag is? That’s when I realised, I might have been unintentionally influenced by the curse of knowledge bias by assuming that something I have spent years thinking about is common knowledge. And if I bring that assumption into my questions, how do I genuinely access their understanding of the law, especially if it is not mediated by formal legal language or even educational training?
I started asking around by speaking mostly with peers and friends who were either close to finishing their PhDs or had already braved the field. A few were generous enough to share their research documents with me (which, let’s admit, is no small thing in the current climate where even an ethics form or a rough research proposal can be vulnerable to misuse). I hope, if you are sharing drafts with potential supervisors or collaborators, you are watermarking them “confidential”/“not for circulation” because that goes a long way in today’s hyper-vigilant research ecosystem. It was important to explain that I was not out to replicate their work, but to understand how they were structuring their interviews, what’s considered acceptable these days, what kinds of questions work, and where researchers tend to stumble. Sure, academic papers helped (Prof. Pahuja’s work, for instance, has been a guiding light), but seeing how peers navigated this in real time gave me the nudge I needed.
I eventually sat down to draft a set of questions guided by my research goals. I found that an informal, conversational interview style worked best with a semi-structured questionnaire, which allowed me to easily adapt it before each session. The plan was to use a flexible framework and reshape it for every interview. With professionals, I could afford to go a bit deeper, unpack legal terms, and probe policy implications. But with artisans, I had to be mindful. I couldn’t open the conversation with something abstract or technical. The questions had to be built gently and had to be layered in a way that by the time I got to the legal concept, the participant was already comfortable in the conversation.
Of course, there’s always that lingering anxiety: what if I forget to ask something important? What if I look back during analysis and realise a critical piece is missing? When I asked my peers how they manage this, the honest answer was: it happens. No matter how prepared you are, there will always be gaps. The more you read, the more new angles emerge, and you find yourself wishing you could go back and change what you asked, or how you asked it, in the interview. There will always be something you miss. And that’s okay. The aim is to make the most of what you can gather during the trip and accept that the study must have boundaries. My supervisors warned me that there’s always a possibility that fieldwork might completely fall apart. And that the best I could do was prepare. After what felt like an endless ethical review process (which, on the plus side, helped sharpen my questionnaire even more), I finally set out.
Before the Questions: Accessing the Right People
One of the most delicate parts of fieldwork begins long before the first question is asked. I realised that securing access was just as crucial as the interviews themselves. Knowing who to approach or even having a starting point can shape the entire visit. But in practice, it’s rarely that neat. The textile artisans I hoped to meet, working in rural or semi-urban craft clusters, were not part of formal networks and were often absent from the digital platforms researchers typically rely on. So, a few months before I travelled, I began laying the groundwork in the only way I knew how: by reaching out. I started messaging people on LinkedIn (yes, even opted for LinkedIn Premium and those elusive InMail credits), sending cold emails to NGOs, cooperative societies, designers, academics – basically anyone who seemed remotely connected to the crafts sector. I did not expect to reach artisans directly through these means, and I didn’t. But that wasn’t the goal. I was trying to find intermediaries, organisations or individuals who had long-term, trust-based relationships with the communities I wanted to engage with.
I was pleased to receive some responses. A few led to productive discussions, while others remained brief or concluded with a polite “best of luck.” Still, the process of reaching out, even if there was no direct outcome, gave me some direction. It helped me locate who is doing what, where, and in what capacity. These early connections later became my entry points on the ground.
Once I arrived, those pre-field digital exchanges were invaluable. I began with the people I had already connected with and from there access evolved organically. One conversation would lead to another, one introduction to a second or third contact. It was essentially snowball sampling, though at the time it felt more like navigating a fragile, unpredictable, but steadily expanding web of trust. Access also depended on mediation. NGOs, community leaders, and state departments often acted as intermediaries, bringing their own perspectives and influence. At times, their support and institutional legitimacy enabled deeper, more open conversations.
My own identity inevitably became part of this dynamic. As an Indian female with a legal education and a researcher’s tag, I was seen differently in different settings. Among younger women artisans, especially those working in semi-urban collectives, my presence was often met with a pleasant surprise. But in other spaces, particularly when I was surrounded by older men or local power holders, my background created a certain distance. Legal education, in particular, carried with it a strange duality, it was either seen with awe, as something distant and elite, or with suspicion, as if I were here to audit, assess, or ‘fix’ something.
There were moments when I could feel the discomfort in the room, like instances when elders would hesitate to speak freely, or when someone would joke about whether I would go back and “file a case.” In many interviews, especially in male-dominated settings, I had to earn the space to be taken seriously. Sometimes that would be by just sitting in silence long enough, sometimes by shifting the tone of the conversation to something more personal, less formal. With time, many did open up, but it was always on their terms, and I had to learn to be okay with that.
Breaking the Ice: Initiation and Rapport Building
In my experience, the ability to initiate a conversation is often what determines whether an interview flows easily or feels like an uphill task. It may sound like a small skill, but in practice, it carries a lot of invisible weight. Especially in socio-legal research, where the subject matter can be unfamiliar or even politically sensitive, the way you open a dialogue can set the tone for the entire exchange.
When I refer to initiation as a skill, I mean the ability to create an environment where someone feels seen, heard, and safe to speak. It’s about how you introduce yourself, what and when you choose to reveal about your work (and yourself), and the tone you strike within those first few minutes. It’s easy to unintentionally slip into a position of informational authority and come across as overconfident or as someone outside the group. Reminding myself of this possibility from time to time helped me stay mindful, so that I could balance between sounding informed and not sounding arrogant or disconnected. In many ways, it’s the soft entry point to what is actually a layered process of building rapport. And building rapport, I am learning, doesn’t happen all at once. It unfolds slowly, over the course of a conversation, sometimes only after the audio recorder is switched off.
This has been especially true with artisans. Often, the initial hesitation is because they are unsure of how to speak to someone they perceive as an outsider, or as a ‘researcher’ with an agenda they don’t fully understand. Sometimes that means beginning with small talk: discussing the infamous Kutchi summer or admiring the craft before diving into legal terminology. Rapport building also means respecting their time: in Bhuj and Kutch, workshops run in the mornings, work pauses in the afternoons due to the midday heat, and evenings are better for meetings. Consent, whether for photos or signatures, is part of this trust-building.
Not every attempt was successful. Some remain unconvinced that it was worth their time. In such cases, it’s best to try without overtrying, accept the refusal, thank them, and gently request if they knew anyone who would be interested in talking. For instance, one senior artisan was particularly hesitant to speak with me and said: “You’ll just use this to get a degree for yourself. How is that going to change anything here, for us?” Comments like these aren’t uncommon, and I will admit, they can be confidence-shaking. But I have come to realise that while creating tangible change on the ground may not always be within immediate reach, there is still value in documenting these perspectives. At the very least, it allows researchers like me to bring these conversations onto more visible platforms like digital spaces and academic forums, where these voices might resonate more widely and perhaps spark deeper engagement with the questions they raise.
In several other interviews, I was struck by the pauses, hesitations, or quiet deflections when I asked about the GI registration process. For some, the term “GI” meant little beyond a government certificate. For others, it was associated with internal politics, exclusion, or unfulfilled promises. Interestingly, many respondents didn’t respond to the law as law but they responded to its material and emotional implications: Who benefits? Who gets left out? Who gets to claim authenticity? One artisan shared, “GI is just something they got for us. I don’t know what to do with it.” In that moment, I realised that legal literacy or the absence of it, was not just a limitation. It was part of the story.
Ethics and Closing the Interview
I followed a formal consent process, explaining the participant information sheet and seeking consent for recordings, data use, and photographs. If anyone was uncomfortable, I offered options like anonymisation or opting out. I carried the forms in English, Hindi, and Kutchi to accommodate language preferences.
Public officials were particularly hesitant about signing consent forms. I noticed that many of them would only offer general or diplomatic responses when the recorder was on, while the more insightful or grounded comments came once the recorder was switched off. Even though this off-the-record information couldn’t be directly quoted, it gave me critical context and shaped my understanding of the ground realities. The challenge of referencing such information in the thesis while maintaining credibility is real, but it is not impossible. Getting signatures or thumbprints from artisans was often tricky, too. Many initially viewed the forms with suspicion, though most eventually agreed. Sometimes carrying other signed copies gave them confidence.
Wrapping up interviews could be tricky when participants were eager to talk. Sometimes participants became particularly animated, eager to share political opinions. One interviewee enthusiastically kept urging me to “note this down” whenever they felt they were saying something exciting politically. I listened actively to build trust, while gently steering back to my research focus. Working with communities facing economic hardship raised many ethical concerns. Was I raising false hopes? Would my work bring meaningful change? Could my data be misused? I attempted to address this by being transparent about my goals, anonymising where needed, and treating consent as an ongoing process. Still, the tension between ethics and representation remained, and perhaps it should. Interviewing in IP legal research is more than just a research method. It’s a way of truly hearing both what is expressed and what has been left unspoken, while also grasping how it unfolds in practice. As IP law scholarship grows to include more empirical and interdisciplinary work, interviews serve as a reminder that law isn’t only made in courts or by legislators. It’s shaped and reshaped in everyday life through conversations. And if we as researchers slow down and pay attention, there’s a chance that the law, too, might begin to shift in response.