Life-centred research invites qualitative researchers to look beyond individual needs and behaviours to the places, communities and living systems that shape people’s experiences. Understanding a person also means understanding the relationships that influence how they live, learn and imagine their future.
For Shruti Umesh Chakke, Founder of Regenerative Nomads, this is more than a change in research terminology. Her work across design, education and community-based learning explores what happens when researchers allow local knowledge, ecology and lived experience to shape both the questions they ask and the methods they use.
Founder
Regenerative Nomads
Ahead of QUAL360 APAC 2026, Shruti shares lessons from place-based learning in the Himalayan region, why communities should be more than sources of research data, how her approach broadens what counts as evidence, and where AI can support inquiry without replacing human relationships.
From human-centred to life-centred research
Much of qualitative research begins by seeking to understand the individual: their motivations, frustrations, decisions and unmet needs. Shruti does not dismiss that work. Instead, she asks what researchers might miss when people are considered separately from the systems around them.
“We have become increasingly sophisticated at understanding people, their behaviours, needs and aspirations. But what happens when we expand our attention beyond the individual to the relationships and living systems that shape their experiences?”
Through Regenerative Nomads, a place-based learning initiative, she explores relationships between self, community and ecosystem. This life-centred research perspective puts questions of ecology, culture and collective wellbeing alongside the needs of individual participants.
As Shruti puts it, “Our work begins with a simple belief: the learner and the land are the curriculum.” The implication for researchers is practical: the context should not merely frame an interview; it may change what needs to be investigated in the first place.
Why place matters in qualitative research
Shruti describes a shift in her own practice from studying people within a setting to understanding how their relationships with that setting influence their choices. Land, livelihoods, cultural practices and community ties are not incidental background details; they can be central to the research question.
“One significant shift in my practice has been moving from researching people within a context to understanding people through their relationships with that context.”
She points to a Regenerative Nomads learning journey in Changthang, Ladakh, where young people took part in observation, conversations, mapping, storytelling and experiential learning. Instead of arriving with a fixed curriculum, the team allowed the landscape and participants’ experiences to influence what they explored.
For place-based qualitative research, this changes the role of the fieldwork setting. The place is not simply where data is collected. It contributes knowledge, raises new questions and can challenge the assumptions that researchers brought with them.
The importance of adapting methods to local settings also comes through in Merlien’s interview on why one-size-fits-all qualitative research fails in APAC, which explores how cultural context can influence the way people take part in research.
When communities become co-researchers
One of the strongest ideas in Shruti’s interview concerns who gets to investigate, interpret and act on research findings. Participation alone does not necessarily mean that participants share ownership of the process or benefit from its outcomes.
“The young people were not simply participants providing information. They became researchers, interpreters and creators, investigating their surroundings and identifying possibilities for their own communities.”
In Changthang, the young participants explored local landscapes, cultural practices and livelihoods, then developed ideas through prototypes and community exhibitions. The purpose extended beyond providing insights to an external team: it also involved building awareness, creative confidence and a stronger sense of agency.
Shruti argues for a more reciprocal form of participatory research, where the work creates value for those taking part, not only for the organisations that commission it. This raises a useful question for any research brief: who will be able to use what is learned?
Rethinking what counts as research evidence
If researchers become more attentive to relationships and place, they may also need to reconsider the forms of evidence they recognise. Interviews remain valuable, but not every kind of knowledge is easily captured through a standard discussion guide.
“Stories, memories, embodied knowledge, cultural practices and ecological observations can reveal dimensions of lived experience that conventional interview-based methods may not fully capture.”
Shruti’s examples point to knowledge held through everyday practices, oral histories and intergenerational exchange. A participant may communicate something more clearly through a map, an activity or a shared observation than through an abstract question.
Broadening the evidence base does not mean treating every observation as self-explanatory. It means making space for culturally relevant ways of expressing knowledge and being thoughtful about who interprets the material once it has been gathered.
Where AI can help — and where it cannot replace experience
Although AI is not the central theme of Shruti’s approach, she recognises its value for organising research material, exploring connections between ideas, preparing learning resources and making documentation more accessible.
Her boundary is the process through which understanding develops. Walking through a landscape, listening to elders or observing relationships between animals, livelihoods and seasonal movement cannot be reduced to reading a generated summary of a community.
She is also cautious about AI becoming the sole interpreter of knowledge that is oral, culturally sensitive or inseparable from its context. Technology may help researchers work with the material, but it should not displace the people whose knowledge it represents.
“Technology can help us process what we have learned. But it should not replace the relationships through which we learn.”
Why inclusive research in Asia needs place-based methods
Drawing on her experiences with communities in India and Bhutan, Shruti challenges the assumption that a research method can be applied uniformly across the Asia-Pacific region. Her examples are specific to the places where she has worked, but they illustrate a wider methodological question: how much should local context influence the way research is designed?
In Changthang, for example, understanding a young person’s aspirations may require attention to pastoral livelihoods, seasonal mobility, family relationships, cultural continuity and environmental change. A question about future opportunities cannot be detached from those conditions.
“Rather than treating communities as contexts in which standardised methods are deployed, we need to recognise that the context itself can shape the method.”
That can mean spending time beyond formal interviews, involving local knowledge holders and allowing people to contribute through mapping, making or storytelling. It also calls for care when interpreting findings across markets: the region’s diversity cannot be explained by one broad category or research framework.
Reading & listening: Shruti’s recommendation
We also asked Shruti to share a source of inspiration for fellow researchers:
- Book: Hospicing Modernity, by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. Shruti recommends it for its exploration of the assumptions and systems that shape how we understand the world. For qualitative researchers, the book offers a reminder to question whose knowledge is valued, recognise our interdependence and remain open to different ways of listening and learning.
Designing research for people, planet and prosperity at QUAL360 APAC 2026
For research teams, the shift towards life-centred research is not simply about adding another theme to a study. It asks who defines the questions, which forms of knowledge are recognised and whether the research process strengthens the communities it involves. Place, ecology and collective wellbeing become part of how researchers judge which kinds of understanding are useful.
That is the conversation Shruti hopes to bring to QUAL360 APAC. Her perspective invites researchers to move beyond extracting information from participants and consider how local knowledge, shared inquiry and a more regenerative research mindset can shape how studies are designed and carried out.
On Tuesday, 3 November 2026, 13:15–14:15, Shruti will join Snehal Pawar, Head of Design, Asia at Alstom, for the interactive workshop “Inclusive Research in Asia: Designing for People, Planet, and Prosperity”. The session will explore inclusive research approaches that consider human needs alongside planetary and societal outcomes, and the importance of more relevant regional perspectives.
The wider QUAL360 APAC 2026 programme brings together speakers from organisations including Google, L’Oréal, Cathay Pacific, Bayer and 3M, with discussions spanning qualitative research methods, cultural understanding, research leadership and emerging technology.
Explore QUAL360 APAC 2026 and register | 3–4 November 2026 | Aloft Singapore Novena, Singapore.
