What happens when research goes wrong, or at least, is perceived to go wrong? How do researchers manage, or indeed fail to manage, the unexpected, and what new intellectual developments might be made possible through engagement with ‘failures’? Jason Hughes, Anna Tarrant, Kahryn Hughes and Grace Sykes discuss these questions, as part of a forthcoming edited collection, called F**k Ups in Social Research: What to do when Research Goes Wrong. Here they explore the value of failure in research and the importance of crafting a critical and reflexive space for learning when social research doesn’t go to plan