Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on methodological and contextual questions related to the practice of ethnography in 'politically sensitive research environments' (Browne and McBride, 2015, p. 34), such as Serbia and Kosovo/a.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on methodological and contextual questions related to the practice of ethnography in 'politically sensitive research environments' (Browne and McBride, 2015), such as Serbia and Kosovo/a. Empirical data in this paper was collected during my doctoral fieldwork in Serbia and Kosovo/a, which was conducted between March 2017 and April 2018. My fieldwork consisted of 'following the people' (Marcus, 1995) or, in my case, 'following the women politicians' in their places of work, conducting participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and multi-sited deep hanging out (Geertz, 1998). I spent one day each week with one politician, observing and participating in her respective activities for that day (i.e., parliament sessions, meetings with citizens, party meetings, conferences, meetings with the Prime Minister). In total, I followed six women politicians, including two women Members of Parliament (MPs) in Serbia, three MPs in Kosovo/a, and one Local Committee Member from the Municipality of North Mitrovica in the period of one year. I also interviewed a total of 20 women politicians from Serbia and Kosovo/a as well as participated in numerous conferences, coffee meetings, lunches, and field trips with women politicians. In the first part of this paper, I will lay the main methodological and contextual issues that emerged during my fieldwork in Serbia and Kosovo/a. In the second part, I will propose some of the techniques and solutions I applied to navigate these issues and other politically explosive debates that follow ethnographic work in politically sensitive environments.