What are two practicing anthropologists to do when they cannot conduct in person research as planned? Lydia O’Neill and Amy Huckfield asked themselves this very question as COVID-19 spread around the globe and the message“Stay Home Save lives” came to dominate our lives.

What started as conversations in the context of their own friendship developed into “The Lockdown Diaries”—an open online community. Each day they asked their online community of over 90 people, aged 16-81, different questions relating to their experiences in lockdown. In this moving piece, O’Neill and Huckfield summarize what this project has meant to them as anthropologists and as humans, share insights from their participants, and display the beauty of community across the globe to remain focused on the collective.