Short Abstract:

This lab proposes a creative theoretical space to examine object lessons in/from the field. We invite participants to bring an object either used or received during research, in an exploration of interconnectedness, solidarity and collaboration.

Long Abstract:

This lab focuses on interaction and collaboration and centres objects in/from the field with their layered, multiple meanings. We employ a feminist lens to examine how women experience exchanges, how our relationships of solidarity with other women evolve and shape our research, how we navigate local codes and misunderstandings, and how we frame our multiple identities and belongings.

We invite participants to bring an object (personal, gift, finding, hand-me down) either used or gotten during research that relays stories of the interconnected lives and relationships forged between researchers and their research partners. The implications and significance of fieldwork are overwhelmingly grasped in retrospect and realized through collaboration. Artefacts often complement fieldnotes in the non-linear progression of ethnographic research, prompting curiosity and care.

We take as a starting point these object lessons from the field as we seek to explore the relationship between fieldworker and the field through the materiality of things, memories, and places. In doing so, we seek to highlight the connective stories that allow for bilateral belonging in spaces of research, academia, and amongst our different constituents in a collaborative, humanistic manner, prompting curiosity and care. Stemming from women’s embodied and emplaced experiences and practices of resilience, this lab aims to create a space where we can voice our journeys, reflect on our intellectual processes, favouring collaboration over competition, in an increasingly competitive neoliberal environment that favors individualism over solidarity, masks inequalities and fosters discrimination based on gender, race, ability, and age (Buryluk and Rahbari 2023).