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Paper short abstract:

This paper furthers my work using Tinder, a geolocation based dating app, to overcome physical boundaries to accessing research interlocutors in my fieldsite in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank, as a tool for conducting socially distanced research in Ukraine under invasion.

Paper long abstract:

In 2016 I began working with Tinder, a geolocation based dating app, to overcome physical boundaries to accessing research interlocutors in my fieldsite in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. Using dating apps as a research method rather than a field of study became far more pertinent during the lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Drawing on this methodological approach, this paper again addresses the ethical and practical implications of using platforms designed for romance and intimacy in anthropological research while also highlighting the benefits of their affordances for anthropologists working in settings of war and occupation. By applying the same method to pilot research on mobility and infrastructure in Ukraine, in this paper I reflect on the practical and ethical implications of this approach, including its limitations. Reflecting on my work in Palestine, I show how dating apps allow anthropologists to socially map locations that are both difficult to access and in flux as well as facilitating contact with populations across boundaries.

In doing so, I also invoke a central paradox in anthropological conceptions of fieldwork that centre the formation of intimate relationships with our interlocutors, but a taboo around discussing the sexual subjectivities of anthropologists and their relationships with research participants. Using a platform designed for romance and intimacy as a research tool, I contribute to anthropologists rethinking conceptions of the responsibilities and subjectivities of anthropologists in the field and the colonial and patriarchal values underpinning them.