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Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on my ongoing but periodically interrupted fieldwork that has informed my research-led teaching and the challenges and opportunities for teaching digital anthropology at undergraduate and postgraduate course levels.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2017, I have made return visits to the Solukhumbu (Everest) region in the Nepali Himalaya. Initial visits became the basis for ethnographic fieldwork, which was interrupted by the pandemic and recommenced in 2023. I argue that an ethnographic approach more effectively investigates experiences of mobile populations that have been characterised by work in remote areas, crisis and precarity. In the study, digital methods (through visual content analysis and digital ethnography) have been effective for gaining insights to the discourse and imaginations that shape the tourist encounter on treks and mountain summit expeditions in the Everest region, however, the continuity of return visits for fieldwork have been invaluable for maintaining relationships with research participants. The paper examines relationships of trust and the role of digital practices that have become essential for mapping economic and social change in the region.

The context for the ongoing but periodically interrupted fieldwork has informed my teaching in an undergraduate digital anthropology course and a masters level course in methods for designing and implementing a short project in anthropology. The paper reflects on my research-led teaching and the challenges and opportunities for teaching digital anthropology.