Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics
Inclusive Ethnography: Making Fieldwork Safer, Healthier and More Ethical
Co-edited with Branwen Spector
This textbook is about making equality, diversity and inclusion central to both teaching about and doing ethnographic fieldwork in practice. For students and junior researchers of colour, diverse sexual orientation and gendered identity, varying levels of physical ability, or living with mental illness there is little space within the academy to discuss how these core aspects of their identity interacted with the realities of doing ethnographic fieldwork. Similarly, there is little opportunity for others to learn from their challenges to inform their own practice. The book focuses on the core challenges repeatedly raised by ethnographers – particularly those doing long-term fieldwork for the first time. In so doing, it seeks to contribute both to changing the way that ethnography is taught and changing the way we think about fieldwork.
Doing fieldwork in and on contexts of violence and instability
In Inclusive Ethnography: Making Fieldwork Safer, Healthier and More Ethical
This chapter reflects on the challenges of doing ethnography either in contexts of violence or on subjects related to violence. It is grounded in a broad understanding of the scope for violence and fieldwork to interact. It moves away from the assumption that ‘violent fieldwork’ only happens in specifically ‘violent places’, and invites readers to consider if and how their topic or fieldsite might engage with questions of violence. I then consider how violent topics or violent spaces can interact with core issues surrounding access to research participants, consent and the building of reciprocal trust. I discuss the entanglements of privilege when confronting violence during fieldwork, before turning to the importance of working with compassion, both for your- self and your research participants.
Experts, not vulnerable: Centering dignity in research with irregularrised migrants
(with Leila Giannetto, Abubaker Khan, Yagoub Kibeida, Sandra King-Savic and Usman Mahar)
Qualitative Research (forthcoming 2025)
This article engages with dilemmas that arise when undertaking research with irregularised migrants, challenging assumptions that an inherent vulnerability because of a lack of papers should be a defining lens. Research with irregularised migrants has long engaged with the ethical dilemmas that such work entails, but almost exclusively this is done in relation to the perceived vulnerability of research participants. Instead, this article highlights how methodological approaches, including interviewing and participant observation can perpetuate the discursive and symbolic production of irregularised migrants. Despite often being grounded in a claim of doing research for social justice, we suggest that qualitative research can also (inadvertently) feed narratives of vulnerability that neither promote dignity nor safety for the research participant. As an alternative, the article outlines a methodological roadmap to critically engage with the concept of vulnerability in migration research.
Field of Screams Revisited: Contending with Trauma in Ethnographic Fieldwork
(with Branwen Spector and Maureen Freed)
Teaching Anthropology (forthcoming 2024)
This article explores ways that trauma can come into tension with anthropological methods, specifically during fieldwork. It is based on findings from a survey conducted among anthropologists in 2023, which sought to understand preparation for fieldwork, including personal preparation, formal support and the ethics process; fieldwork experiences, including forms of trauma exposure and other aspects of context which may have heightened vulnerability or reactivity to traumatic stressors; researcher responses to accumulated distress of fieldwork; and finally, how supervisory relationships and institutional culture shape and influence researchers’ experience. We suggest that by looking at fieldwork experiences through the lens of trauma, we can achieve a rich and specific understanding of the extent to which this is an issue within the discipline. Doing so can enable us to think constructively about moving towards a trauma-informed anthropology.
Teaching Brief: What does it mean to teach a trauma-informed anthropology?
(with Branwen Spector and Maureen Freed)
Teaching Anthropology (forthcoming 2024)
This Teaching Brief is an extended discussion on the findings presented in our article ‘Field of Screams Revisited: contending with trauma in ethnographic fieldwork’. In the article, we report on a survey on the fieldwork experiences of 43 anthropologists. The survey sought to understand the kinds of trauma exposure experienced by anthropologists; the ways in which researchers were affected by this exposure both during and after fieldwork; and the support they received – or would have benefitted from – to anticipate, prevent and mitigate this. In summary, analysis of the survey led to the following core findings: first, that trauma exposure is a feature of many fieldwork experiences whether or not the fieldwork takes place in a violent or chaotic setting. Second, that there are notable gaps in the skills, preparedness and support of researchers who are exposed to trauma in the course of their fieldwork. Third, that encounters with trauma, even if ‘only’ vicarious trauma, during fieldwork can have significant adverse impact on researchers, which in turn has an impact on the overall quality and integrity of the research produced as a result of the fieldwork. Finally, we shared findings on how researchers coped with the difficulties they had faced, including levels of support received from departments and supervisors (more than half of respondents who felt able to share the challenges they had faced doing fieldwork with their supervisors or other senior academics felt that their concerns had been downplayed or dismissed). Taken together, it appears that many aspects of the fieldwork preparation experience are not sufficiently trauma-informed, and that this is detrimental both to the wellbeing of some researchers and to the quality of research produced. In this Teaching Brief, and in the style set out by this journal, we offer educators a series of questions to reflect on in order to move towards a trauma-informed anthropology, prompted by the findings of this survey.