Unhealthy at the Health Fair: A personal account of chronic illness and disability in the field
This reflective essay examines the author’s experience conducting fieldwork while managing chronic illness and disability.
Towards a compassionate turn
This article introduces The New Ethnographer’s call for a “compassionate turn” in anthropology, extending the reflexive turn by foregrounding how fieldwork impacts researchers as well as interlocutors.
Through the looking glass: learning to do ethnography with children and their families
In this article, Nieves Galera reflects on the practical and emotional challenges of conducting ethnographic fieldwork with infants and their families.
The Murky World of ‘Extremism’ Research
Richard McNeil-Willson critiques sensationalised and unethical approaches to researching so-called “extremist” groups, responding to popular accounts that celebrate deception, infiltration, and personal risk.
The ethnographer’s body is gendered
Writing from experiences of harassment, surveillance, and sexualised misrecognition during fieldwork in a highly militarised context, Anya Evans foregrounds the ethnographer’s body as a central site of knowledge production and vulnerability.
The ethics of mediation in conservation spaces
This article explores the ethical precarity of conducting anthropological research within contested conservation spaces, where moral boundaries are blurred and alliances are unstable.
Pregnant or fieldworker; should ‘all foreseeable risks’ be avoided in the field?
Emanuelle Roth critically examines how institutional risk frameworks reshape ethnographic practice through her experience of being recalled from doctoral fieldwork in Guinea after disclosing a pregnancy.
Orientalized Gender and the Field
Drawing on her Master’s fieldwork in Leipzig, Salma Moustafa Khalil reflects on how orientalism, gender, and racialised assumptions shape ethnographic encounters when a Middle Eastern woman conducts research in Europe.
Gender and danger: the ‘good girl persona’ in institutional fieldwork
This post reflects on contemporary challenges in ethnographic research, foregrounding the everyday ethical, emotional, and institutional pressures that shape fieldwork practice.
Friendships Built on (Dis)Trust: Navigating fragility during fieldwork
Hareem Khan examines the fragility and fluidity of friendships formed during ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on trust, distrust, and rupture as constitutive elements of research relationships.