Paper Short Abstract:

Ethnographic fieldwork involves complex power dynamics and implicit ethical and moral debts. This paper reflects on these challenges through my fieldwork in a strongly patriarchal Indian community, highlighting the tensions and ambivalences faced, and the need for better preparation for future anthropologists.

Paper Abstract:

Ethnographic fieldwork entails a network of power relations and implicit ethical and moral debts, making their management not only difficult but often overwhelming, both physically and psychologically. These dynamics depend on the fieldwork context and the researcher's position and condition (origin, social class, sex, gender and role, amog others).

Drawing from my experience conducting fieldwork in a strongly patriarchal community in India and within a context of significant social differences, I aim to reflect on these issues by showcasing the tensions and ambivalences we face. How does one manage power relations with men in a patriarchal context while being a woman with strong feminist convictions? How can one dismantle perceived power relations when fieldwork participants view you as superior? How does one handle moral and ethical debts with counterparts when "collisions" between different actors arise? What can be done when the requirement for empathy with counterparts becomes a "burden"?

These reflections seek to highlight the challenges of fieldwork that are largely not conveyed to new generations of anthropologists, helping them better prepare to confront the real problems they will often face alone. This analysis is framed within critical feminist theories, such as corporeal feminism and affect theories, and aims to contribute to the discussion on embodied subjectivities, fieldwork dynamics, and ethnographic authority.

Paper Short Abstract:

Based on auto-ethnography and interviews with ethnographers working in northern regions of Canada, this paper analyzes the process of filing complaints in response to gendered sexual violence experienced in ethnographic research contexts.

Paper Abstract:

In her recent work, Sara Ahmed (2021) shows how complaints processes illuminate structures of power in academic institutions. Based on auto-ethnography and interviews with ethnographers working in northern regions of Canada, this paper analyzes the process of filing complaints or taking legal action in response to gendered sexual violence in both academic and independent research contexts. Examining case studies of responses to gendered sexual violence experienced during ethnographic research, I compare how complaints travel through these two research contexts to illuminate the structural conditions that allow violence to propagate.

This paper shows how the northern Canadian fieldsites in which participants work, often characterized by remoteness and masculinist extractive industries, play a role in how gendered violence is experienced and navigated in its aftermath. Queer, Indigenous, and gender diverse researchers create unique networks of support in which to conduct their research successfully, often requiring unexpected divergences from what could be considered conventional method, ethics, and professional outputs. While the structures of academic and non-academic institutions differ, academic training upholds informal narratives about expected hardships of research that put researchers at risk in both contexts. The opportunities for recourse available for ethnographers who experience violence are also limited in both institutions. I conclude with reflections on the potential for structural change and improved training for graduate students. Gendered challenges faced by ethnographers cannot be resolved by “leaning in” (Sandberg 2013) to a male-dominated field, but rather by crafting a decolonial ethnographic practice in which to safely conduct research beyond that very structure.

Paper Short Abstract:

The embodied dimensions of conducting ethnographic research remain largely absent from discussion about researchers‘ positionalities. I argue that the lack of attention for ethnographers‘ bodies in the field serves to shroud and maintain power structures of anthropological knowledge production by hindering more nuanced discussions about who can(not) do fieldwork and how.

Paper Abstract:

Abandoning the idea of ethnographers as „objective“ or „impartial“ observers was a significant step in challenging hegemonic colonial modes of knowledge production in anthropology and beyond. Since then, acknowledging and writing about one‘s own positionalities in relation to one‘s respective field site has become a common practices in anthropology. Yet, even decades after the so-called reflexive turn, the material (and) embodied dimensions of positioning oneself and moving within a particular field of ethnographic research remain largely absent from these discussions. More than a simple omission, I argue that the lack of attention for ethnographers‘ bodies in the field serves to shroud and maintain power structures of anthropological knowledge production by hindering more nuanced discussions about who can(not) do fieldwork and how.

To illustrate the necessity of paying attention to the bodily dimensions of fieldwork, I will draw on interrelated examples from recent fieldwork I conducted with truck drivers and construction workers in Germany: As a female researcher in a predominately male field, my gendered body proved to be an obvious, constant and inescapable source of struggles in the field. Furthermore, embodied im/possibilties of negotiating class, ethnicity and sexual orientation also proved to be a prerequisite for access to the field, begging the question which bodies are „required“ for certain kinds of fieldwork. The bodily effects of remaining highly mobile for an extended period of time lastly highlighted questions of physical and mental health of ethnographers, and ultimately the need for a broader discussion about access and inclusion in ethnographic fieldwork.

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper examines how we relate to our bodies as feminist researchers when doing ethnography on technology-facilitated sexual violence. We explore the embodied discomforts of researching violent digital environments and we expose the practices that we have developed to address the ethical complexities that we have encountered.

Paper Abstract:

By sharing insights from the DiViSAR project, we illustrate how digital fieldwork in the context of technology-facilitated sexual violence "hurts" researchers and challenges traditional boundaries of ethnographic work. Thus, we explore how fieldwork in violent environments reshapes our relationship with both social research. Specifically, we focus on how consistent exposure to violence impacts us on an embodied level. Moving away from the traditional view of the researcher as a distant, unaffected observer, we argue that ethnographies of TFSV reveal the vulnerability of researchers, profoundly altering our connection to the field. The complexities of this type of research challenge key ethical principles that guide us, such as fostering collaborative relationships with participants, developing ethics of care, and managing the restitution of knowledge. Our DiViSAR experience underscores how exposure to violence leads to the dehumanization, desensitization, and epistemic pessimism of researchers. Drawing on Moeller’s concept of ‘compassion fatigue’ (2002), we reflect on how we strive to transform academia by practicing empathy with our participants—and the tensions that arise from doing so. We confront feelings of guilt and discomfort associated with caring for participants who perpetrate violence against women. To counter the potential for epistemic pessimism, we emphasize the importance of collective strategies—coordinating working schedules, sharing physical spaces, engaging in co-writing—to foster hope and mutual support. In doing so, we reconsider corporeal impacts of ethnographic research in digital violent and traumatic environments, engaging in the "unwriting" of the disconnection between the embodied experiences of TFSV and the social recognition of harm (Brydolf-Horwitz, 2018).

Paper Short Abstract:

Taking as a starting point my own positionality as a Polish researcher doing fieldwork among Brazilians of Polish origin, and a mother who combines fieldwork with care work, I explore the consequences of my family’s presence in the field, and the ways it shaped our ethnographic encounters.

Paper Abstract:

In this presentation, I explore my positionality and survival strategies both in academia and patriarchal society by examining the implications of researching the Global South from a post-communist, semi-peripheral country, and simultaneously navigating (not)going beyond my own nation in the context of diaspora research. I begin with the feminist call for the (re)presentation of diverse voices, emphasizing the significance of the researcher’s bodily experience. I focus on merging the roles of mother and anthropologist and how these intersections affect ethnographic encounters and influence their understanding, as well as the further processes of analysis and writing.

My analysis is based on my ethnographic research, conducted from 2019 to 2021 on the locally defined heritage and sense of belonging among descendants of Polish migrants in southern Brazil. My family (husband and sons) accompanied me for most of the time in the field, a rural and patriarchal village predominantly inhabited by descendants of Poles. Although I did not specifically research child-rearing and culturally constructed motherhood, these topics frequently emerged in conversations, allowing me to scrutinize them. I also formed strong, close relationships with my research participants, who were also parents. My primary question was: how did being in the field with my family affect my research? How did my sons’ presence, race, spoken language, ways of playing, and food choices shape our encounters and my research partners’ perceptions of what it means to be Polish? Clearly, all multidimensional elements of my positionality played various roles throughout the research process and in its aftermath.

Paper Short Abstract:

In this presentation I reflect on the creative mechanisms of support offered by Angelica Moreiras, an Afro-descendent creative. How do we address unwritten scripts that encompass bias, further racism, and enact marginalization? What unspoken acts counter this kind of historical hegemony?

Paper Abstract:

Loss often goes unwritten in ethnographic studies. How do we engage the space of fieldwork from our multiple positionalities? In this presentation I reflect on the creative mechanisms of survival and support offered by Angelica Moreiras, an Afro-descendent creative and business-woman, who died too young. Unwritten are the questions of medical access. Did she get appropriate attention, or were her ailments ignored by a system renown for its marginalization of Black women? How do we address unwritten scripts that encompass bias, further racism, and enact marginalization? What unspoken acts counter this kind of institutional and historical hegemony? As I mourn the too-early loss of her life, I remember and honor her strength, intelligence, and presence. I examine the unwritten, but emotionally captured/captivating, relationship between us, ethnographer and community leader; and explore our interlacing practices cultivating and salvaging, minoritized traditions. I first met her, selling jewels of the Orixas at the Caribbean Studies Conference held in Bahia, Brazil. I bought earrings of Oshun, and wore those earrings for years. She was present throughout my first five months of research opening doors and making my work possible. She valued and advocated for bodies in motion --dances of the Orixas, afro-religious practices, and the culinary arts of Afro-Bahia that anchor identities in Transatlantic spaces. I meditate on our relationship as history in motion, by which object lessons are garnered from bought/shared/gifted items, which are shared among women who, thus transcend marginality through their creativity and solidarity.

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores the corporeal and sensory dimensions of fieldwork by analyzing ethnologists' fieldwork diaries preserved in the archives of the Estonian National Museum.

Paper Abstract:

This paper explores fieldwork as an emotional, corporeal and sensory experience through the example of Estonian ethnologists’ field diaries. From the 1960s to the 1990s, the Estonian National Museum organized numerous field expeditions to the Finno-Ugric peoples of the Soviet Union. The primary aim of these trips was to collect objects of material heritage. The field diaries provide fascinating documentation of the daily life during these expeditions, offering comments and impressions deemed irrelevant or unsuitable for inclusion in the ‘official’ ethnographic accounts. Thus, the diaries serve as a unique source for studying the ethnographic collecting and research process, highlighting the fact that ethnographers did not operate in the field as neutral instruments. This presentation focuses on how fieldwork as both an emotional and bodily experience is reflected in the diaries. I am also interested in tracing the locals’ reactions to Estonian ethnologists as distinct bodily beings, and how physical appearance and bodily practices can both create proximities and establish distances in the field encounter.

Paper Short Abstract:

Drawing on a long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Iranian refugees in Germany and based on the theoretical works of critical migration and feminist scholars, this paper aims to accentuate ‘accent’ and incorporate it into ethnographic practice to recognize alternative forms of knowledge production.

Paper Abstract:

The experience of migration leaves marks on the body both literally and figuratively. These marks take multiple forms and (re)produce bodies of ‘deterritorialized’ people as ‘unwanted’, ‘excluded’, ‘not integrated’ or ‘partially/temporarily included’. Whether it is physical/psychological trauma or the conspicuousness of physical characteristics such as ‘accent’, they are both recognizable and categorizable within hierarchical systems of power relations. Besides, the very presence of migrant bodies represents the borderland as a liminal state of (not) here and (not) there. Hence, the practice of ethnography about ‘deterritorialized’ people by ‘deterritorialized’ researchers can result in a stylistic genre with both formal and thematic characteristics that, to quote Hamid Naficy (2001), can be an aesthetic response to the lived experiences of researchers. Being ‘accented in field’ creates new dynamics, challenges, but also opens up possibilities for new ethnographic understandings of migration and bordering processes. It allows the ‘unwritten politics’ of people’s everyday lives to infiltrate the ethnographic practice/understanding/text and thus create new poetics and politics of ethnography. Following Shahram Khosravi’s (2024) account of ‘accent’ as an epistemological and methodological refusal and a form of positioning against colonial processes of knowledge production, this paper aims to accentuate ‘accent’ and incorporate it into ethnographic practice in order to recognize alternative forms of knowledge production. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with Iranian refugees in Germany and based on the theoretical works of critical migration and feminist scholars, this paper proposes the term ‘accented ethnography’ to characterize the fieldwork dynamics in ethnographic practice and its resulting ethnographic representation.

Paper Short Abstract:

As a disabled anthropologist immersed in a different culture, my unpredictable body and rhythm disrupt conventional able-bodied ideas of what ethnography traditionally looks like. In the paper, I explore how behind the scenes of centering the narratives of reproductive aspirations, autonomy, and control of my interlocutors - Spanish women with intellectual disability - relationships built on shared vulnerability transformed the traditional process of engagement. My auditory and speech processing challenges destabilised traditional power dynamics, creating moments where interlocutors—many of whom also experience speech difficulties—assisted me in finding words. These interactions produced a dynamic of mutual care and interdependence, reframing disability not as a limitation but as a source of methodological insight. Such embodied encounters challenge ideas of ethnographic authority, researcher neutrality, and "normative" fieldwork practices. My "out-of-place" body underscores how positionality—marked by disability, gender, and intersecting identities—shapes knowledge production and field relationships. By unwriting ableist assumptions within ethnography, we move toward a more inclusive and reflexive discipline—one that values intersubjectivity, embodied difference, and collaborative ways of knowing.

Paper Abstract:

Anthropologists are taught early on that our bodies are key tools for fieldwork—often framed as capable of withstanding culture shock, long hours, and the rigors of academic engagement. Yet this framing privileges an able-bodied ideal, leaving little room for bodies and rhythms that do not conform. As a foreign, disabled anthropologist with an unpredictable body and rhythm, my presence in the lives of my interlocutors—intellectually disabled women in Spain—disrupted conventional researcher-subject hierarchies and revealed new possibilities for embodied ethnographic practice.

My interlocutors' stories, lives, and aspirations for autonomy and reproductive futures are often mediated by others, sometimes through coercion and violence. In this paper, I center their narratives while exploring the transformative relationships we built on shared vulnerability and intersubjectivity. My auditory and speech processing challenges destabilized traditional power dynamics, creating moments where interlocutors—many of whom also experience speech difficulties—assisted me in finding words. These interactions produced a dynamic of mutual care and interdependence, reframing disability not as a limitation but as a source of methodological insight. Such embodied encounters challenge ideas of ethnographic authority, researcher neutrality, and "normative" fieldwork practices.

My "out-of-place" body underscores how positionality—marked by disability, gender, and intersecting identities—shapes knowledge production and field relationships. By unwriting ableist assumptions within ethnography, we move toward a more inclusive and reflexive discipline—one that values intersubjectivity, embodied difference, and collaborative ways of knowing.

Paper Short Abstract:

I aim to share how has been the exploration and analysis of the transmission process of dance in spaces where female dancers experience dancehall, such as parties and classes, from the embodied perspective of the dance.

Paper Abstract:

There has been a significant amount of academic research conducted on the topic of dancehall in Jamaica, with a focus on ethnomusicology (Cooper 2004) and cultural studies (Stanley Niaah 2010 and Hope 2006). However, these studies tend to analyse dancehall solely as a phenomenon that takes place at parties, with music being the primary subject of analysis and dance being considered a byproduct of the music.

It is crucial to give ethnographic attention to the analysis of dance as it is a potent symbol that cannot be reduced to any other form of human activity. Dance communicates emotions that cannot be expressed verbally (Giurchescu 2001). Therefore, it is essential to study various spaces where dancehall is experienced by dancers, including parties, dance classes, and competitions, which previous anthropological investigations have overlooked. I consider it important to focus the attention of the dancehall from the embodied perspective because is a phenomenon that was born in a dancing context. Dancehall means dancing in the hall. The hall is the parties takes place in Kingston, Jamaica (Hope, 2006).

That is why I am exploring and analysing the transmission process of dance in spaces where female dancers experience dancehall, such as parties and classes, from the embodied experience. I aim to share an overview of how I tackled this question during my fieldwork in Jamaica in the summer of 2023. To learn and research about dancehall dancers, I decided to participate in dance activities with them as much as possible.

Paper Short Abstract:

Based on my two-year fieldwork in Chinatown, Prato, I argue that the researcher's body politic can often be an "in-betweener", a piece of human infrastructure that deploys to link people and processes otherwise disconnected in urban migration contexts.

Paper Abstract:

I spent four months in Prato, Tuscany, at the beginning of 2023 trying to find my place in the city. I was a complete outsider and had to build my cultural competency from scratch. I was a Romanian middle-aged woman starting her doctoral research. I was neither Chinese, nor Italian, and I felt I had no claim over the research field. My Mandarin language was still rudimentary and I still had difficulties expressing myself in Italian after only a year of living in the country.

I was a disconnected female immigrant from the global South doing research in the North, with a preference for a cosmopolitan East Asian aesthetic, formed through years of cosmopolitan consumption of pop culture (anime, cinema, television, fashion, martial arts, videogames, art etc.) But given time, I found other women who embodied multiculturalism and positioned themselves as connectors in the city's human fabric. Together with them, in three different, yet connected case studies – an art association, an afterschool, and through fandom - I became part of a human infrastructure that deployed itself in-between to link disconnected processes and groups of people otherwise unconnected.

My own ethnic, cultural aand emotional “in-betweenness” - defined as a form of embodied multiculturalism that, in a specific place and at a specific time, is positioned (politically, socially, or culturally) to reorganize coexistence in the multicultural city – shaped my research, conceptualization, and interpretation of the field.

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper examines the embodied experience of occupying a "halfie" position in the ethnography of faith, where researchers navigate insider-outsider roles shaped by their intersectional identities, including gender, class, nationality, and religion. While presumed proximity to communities may ease access, it can also complicate relationships and highten mistrust. By reflecting on the entanglements of researcher identity and positionality, the paper urges a rethinking of traditional ethnographic boundaries, unwriting conventional notions of researcher's authority and legitimacy in the field.

Paper Abstract:

This paper explores the embodied experience of occupying a "halfie" position in the ethnography of faith. Halfie ethnographers, according to Lila Abu-Lughod, are “people whose national or cultural identity is mixed by virtue of migration, overseas education, or parentage” (1991: 137). Returning to their own societies for anthropological research, halfies can be placed somewhere between “native” and “non indigenous” anthropologists, as they work in communities where they have ambivalent claims of membership.

Using critical feminist theories and affective frameworks, I examine how researchers' intersectional identities—such as gender, class, nationality, and religion—shape their engagement with studied communities. Halfies, who navigate both insider and outsider roles, are often presumed to have easier access to their communities due to shared identities. However, this assumed proximity complicates ethnographic relationships, as halfies are neither fully embraced as insiders nor entirely positioned as outsiders, and this liminal status can heighten mistrust rather than ease access. By reflecting on the embodied entanglements of researcher identity and positionality, this paper challenges dominant narratives of ethnographic authority and legitimacy, unwriting traditional boundaries of ethnographic practice.

Paper Short Abstract:

This article uses the notion of the “body multiple” to examine shifting subjectivities that emerged through ethnographic work in a German packaging factory. Focusing on my perceived embodiments – marked as both historical kin and a class-based outsider – it investigates how labour and belonging are relationally negotiated in migration and factory work, raising ethical and political questions about "value" and "human worth".

Paper Abstract:

This article engages with the concept of the “body multiple” to explore the layered and shifting subjectivities that emerged during my ethnographic research on post-Soviet migration, work, and worth in a male-dominated packaging factory in Germany. Placing the emphasis on ethnographer’s body, I illuminate how my own perceived positionality – shaped by notions of class, (in)experience with hard labour, and cultural displacement – became a critical reference point for my interlocutors to reflect on the spectrum of valuable versus disposable work and how their own labour as assembly line workers is situated within it.

I structure my argument around my two contrasting perceived embodiments, which raise critical questions about the ethics and politics of labour in the context of migration and work. On one hand, I was often marked as svoi – a Russian-language term denoting kinship or historical familiarity – as someone who understands a shared morality of work and progress due to my own migratory and socialist background. On the other hand, I was simultaneously aligned with the company managers who, in the eyes of my interlocutors, had not yet learned the meaning of “real work” but still enjoyed social recognition and belonging that they lacked. Against this backdrop, their own bodies seemed to lose significance, rendering both their labour and themselves disposable. Situated within this ambivalent, often conflicting, perspective, I reflect on how both my interlocutors and I, as a researcher, sought to make sense of what “proper work” entails in relation to one another.

Paper Short Abstract:

This paper explores unwriting through audio-visual research on vulnerability, centering the body to rethink relationships and (dis)connections in ethnographic practice. By using film and soundscapes, I foreground vulnerability as a dynamic, embodied process, challenging textual hegemony and fixed narratives.

Paper Abstract:

This paper explores unwriting through my audio-visual research on vulnerability, centering the body to rethink relationships and (dis)connections in daily encounters, as well as ethnographic practice. Traditional academic writing often flattens the complexity of lived experience, imposing fixed narratives and categories that overlook the embodied, ambiguous, and relational dimensions of human existence. By adopting audio-visual methods—specifically film and soundscapes—I foreground vulnerability as a dynamic process that unfolds within spaces of tension, silence, and visibility.

Through filmic engagement and drawing on feminist discourses and existential anthropology, I center bodies, gestures, and emotions as key sites of knowledge, allowing vulnerability to emerge not as a fixed condition but as a dynamic and co-constructed reality. By capturing the subtleties of lived experience, I position myself as a vulnerable observer while acknowledging the limitations of transferring human experience into language.

Navigating my own personal and professional vulnerabilities, I confront the challenges of representing what often remains unspeakable. I argue that unwriting requires methods beyond text to capture the fluidity of relationships—those in-between states of connection and disconnection, strength and fragility, certainty and doubt.

This paper contributes to current discussions on ethnographic authority by advocating for multi-sensory approaches that challenge textual hegemony and create transformative spaces for representation. By repositioning the body as central to ethnographic practice, I propose vulnerability as both a methodological tool and a way of reimagining how we relate to our research subjects, our writing, and ourselves.

Paper Short Abstract:

In my fieldwork (2017–2018) on fertility rituals in Montenegro, where son preference persists, my body became a site of knowledge production. After participating in fertility rituals aimed at conceiving a male child, I discovered I was pregnant and gave birth to a son. I argue that fieldwork is ongoing, continually reshaping the researcher’s understanding of the field and themselves. This experience also deepened my understanding of the women I engaged with in the field and who also participated in similar fertility rituals.

Paper Abstract:

In my fieldwork (2017–2018) on fertility rituals in Montenegro—a society where son preference persists in both historical and contemporary contexts (Stump 2011, UNDP 2012)—my body became both a site of knowledge production and an example of embodied ethnographic subjectivity. Participating in fertility rituals and womb massages aimed at conceiving a male child, I returned to Latvia and soon discovered I was pregnant. Several months later, I gave birth to a boy. This deeply personal experience, inseparable from my research, challenges conventional understandings of fieldwork as a detached or finite process. My body’s transformation and the birth of my son blurred the lines between the personal and academic, field and home.

This paper contributes to the panel’s exploration of unwriting by centring the researcher’s body as a key site of knowledge production. First, I argue that fieldwork does not necessarily end but remains embedded in the researcher’s life, continually reshaping their understanding of the field and themselves. My pregnancy, as an outcome of field participation, reflects the enduring presence of the field. Second, this embodied experience deepened my understanding of the women I collaborated with—women who also engaged in fertility rituals to conceive sons.