By understanding pandemics and compounding disasters as disruptive sociopolitical processes rooted in histories and geographies of systemic inequality, we reflect on both novel and familiar manifestations of research practice, ethical decision making, and responsibility during the COVID-19 pandemic. We advocate for the importance of flexible, care-driven research methods that forefront local expertise and collaborations and relational ethics that are, oftentimes, at odds with neoliberal and institutional temporalities. Lastly, we reflect on how our own positionalities and experiences shape how we have navigated, reconceptualized, and challenged our own research practices in the context of a global pandemic.