Paper short abstract:

As the only social scientist on board of a German research vessel, I mapped myself analysing how my identity, emotions, and environment influenced my own research, using autoethnography to highlight the usually unseen ethical and personal challenges of fieldwork in a confined, moving space.

Paper long abstract:

During summer 2021, I accompanied a seven-week expedition on a German research vessel, which aimed to map large parts of the Northwest Atlantic Mid-Ocean Channel (NAMOC) in the Labrador Sea between Canada and Greenland.

As the only social scientist on board, I followed the scientists and crewmembers in their everyday working routines to understand the knowledge production processes from a practice perspective. Yet, this presentation takes a further step by autoethnographically mapping and diffracting my positionality in this moving field. How did my positionality including my intersectional identity markers, such as gender, age, and origin, but also my socialisation, and social, economic, and political background guide and influence my research on the vessel? How did it change through seasickness, the constant surrounding vast ocean and the confined space of a 100m long vessel?

My findings will be supported by videos and visual storytelling, which include reflections on my shifting emotions during the expedition, my access to the field, and the effects of my research on the natural scientist’s attempt to map a deep-sea channel. Thus, while contributing to mapping the material my findings shed light on mapping the usually unseen in science-making – a researcher’s own positionality moving between physical spaces and emotional landscapes shedding light on questions of ethics, privacy, and (personal) challenges while conducting an ethnography on the move.