Short Abstract:

This workshop for educators invites participants to consider the importance of ‘moving on’ as a discipline, community, and individuals from trauma incurred in the pursuit of ethnographic research. We will develop strategies and tools for supervisors to support both their supervisees and themselves.

Long Abstract:

This workshop for educators invites participants to consider the importance of ‘moving on’ as a discipline, a community, and individuals from trauma incurred in the pursuit of ethnographic research. Existing research (Pollard 2009; Freed, Procter, and Spector 2024) shows that experiences of trauma are ubiquitous among PhD students and early career researchers, and yet Anthropology as a discipline is doing little to support and create meaningful cultural change for its practitioners. Our own research shows that cultural and educational change is particularly necessary in order to inform, support, and treat experiences of trauma emerging from fieldwork, particularly within the supervisory relationship.

Supervisors play a critical role in modelling management of the impacts of trauma exposure resulting from academic work. The normalisation of discussions of trauma, however, relies on appropriate recognition of and support for their own potential trauma, which early generations of anthropologists may not have had. We also acknowledge the multiple responsibilities and unreasonable expectations placed on supervisors in the neoliberal academic context, and seek to create a supportive and compassionate space. In this lab we collaboratively develop strategies and tools for supervisors to support both their supervisees and themselves in moving on from an anthropology that silences, represses, or otherwise ignores the realities of fieldwork.