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Paper short abstract

The paper examines a fieldwork-based teaching method in the Ethnographic Laboratory at the University of Warsaw, focusing on students’ sensitivity and ethical reflexivity. It shows how encounters in polarized contexts foster imagination, tolerance, and reflection on identity while posing challenges.

Paper long abstract

The paper presents a distinctive educational method implemented in the undergraduate programme in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw. As part of the two-year Ethnographic Laboratory course, students gain practical experience in ethnographic fieldwork. This approach to teaching anthropology is particularly effective in times of strong social polarization, as direct engagement with diverse discourses, practices, and ways of experiencing the world fosters the development of an anthropological imagination, broadens personal horizons, and strengthens negotiation skills and tolerant attitudes.

The presentation analyses students’ experiences, focusing on the sensitivity of young researchers, understood as a specific form of emotional vulnerability combined with ethical reflexivity accompanying encounters with social and cultural otherness. The analysis is based on teaching observations and students’ semester papers documenting their fieldwork experiences. Field research is conceptualized as a liminal experience, comparable to a rite of passage, that engages students in an intensive, holistic way. Particular attention is paid to the anxieties associated with first interviews, stress resulting from contact with unfamiliar individuals, and feelings of inadequacy or rejection.

Conducting interviews was emotionally demanding, especially for students with strongly developed worldview-based identities inspired by feminist and progressive discourses. Encounters with respondents’ views, frequently racist, nationalist, or sexist, were experienced as stressful and unsettling.

The paper concludes that the more clearly defined a student’s identity is, the more emotionally challenging fieldwork becomes. In this situation, fieldwork is exceptionally significant and productive. Sensitivity thus emerges as both a challenge and a constitutive value of the research process.