How might our research practice, and our very way of knowing, change if, instead of rushing to feed qualitative data into “intelligent” machines for the supposed ever optimal analysis, we returned our attention to the living moment of data production itself, treating it as an embodied, mindful, relational, and transformative act of co-creation, presence, and meaning-making that no algorithm can replicate?

In the era of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), this special issue of the Homo Virtualis Journal attempts exactly this: to move the conversation from how AI can enhance efficiency to what is unique about qualitative research and distinguishes it from other epistemological and methodological traditions. Through a series of peer-reviewed articles based on the dissertation projects of undergraduate psychology students at Panteion University, we emphasize the role that qualitative inquiry plays as a deeply relational, multimodal, process-oriented, and transformative research practice that goes beyond understanding to world-making.