Paper short abstract:

This paper is a short exposition on some methodological shortcomings and opportunities I faced while conducting 12 months of fieldwork within a computer science laboratory in the UK.

Paper long abstract:

For my doctoral research, I carried out one year of participant observation within a "Science Automation" laboratory, whose scientists used artificial intelligence and robotics to automate microbiological experiments.

As I had no previous experience studying scientists, and had at most a fleeting understanding of what carrying out work with computer scientists entailed, I was thrown inside and had to navigate a social universe I knew relatively little about -- in proper ethnographic fashion.

Thus, rather than positing what should and should not be done - as I recognise anthropological fieldwork is first and foremost about learning how to conduct oneself in the field -, it is my intention here to merely highlight some things I wish I knew before starting my fieldwork, and recount how I managed to gradually negotiate a place to myself among my informants.