Paper short abstract:

Using a single encounter with an informant, in this paper I explore how informants can change research directions for ethnographies, and discuss the importance of including these encounters autoethnographically.

Paper long abstract:

Key informants have been the central focus of ethnographies for decades (Crapanzano (1985), McCarthy Brown (2001)). In this paper, however, I explore how key informants can change the focus of ethnographic research, even if they are only met once. I begin by discussing an ethnographic vignette I wrote (Nielsen 2014) to outline my encounter with one young woman while conducting fieldwork in a higher education setting in Ireland during my doctoral studies. I use this text as the foundation to discuss issues relating to how my research changed focus from tourism to learning in the matter of two hours, and the implications this had on research design, literature reviews, and matters of ethnographic representation. I then conclude with a discussion of the implications this has for the writing of autoethnography, and balancing the importance of an informant with how encounters with them can change the ethnographer as well.