Fieldwork Meets Crisis

Location: Online
Time: 21-23 October 2020
Target group: Interested doctoral candidates from all anthropology departments
Deadline for applications: 07 September 2020

Brief description

The Autumn School takes its starting point in the current pandemic moment, which substantially affects our discipline. (Field) research cannot be conducted or changes significantly, the mobility of researchers is limited, physical proximity on-site is replaced by online contacts, planning security gives way to uncertainty. The current situation is particularly challenging for doctoral students and early-career researchers who cannot carry out their research as planned and are exposed to professional uncertainty due to temporary employment limitations. This autumn school aims to address
these challenges and support doctoral students in seeking solutions for their research projects and academic careers.

Even if corona-induced changes in ethnographic research will (hopefully) not remain a permanent condition, they provoke important questions and discussions that go beyond the pandemic moment and remain relevant for social and cultural anthropology as a discipline. This autumn school focuses on contemporary data-saturated life worlds and enquires into the social consequences of digitization and its methodological and epistemological impact.

Download programme (688 KB)

Application Procedure

We look forward to receiving your application to the autumn school by 07 September 2020 at the latest (herbstakademie@dgska.de). The organizers will get back to you by 17 September 2020 as to whether and how participation can be guaranteed. Please enclose a 2-3 pages exposé with your application letter, which contains a narrative on the following points:

(a) institutional context as well as topic and question of your doctoral research,
(b) information on the current state of your research as well as your motivation for participating in the event,
(c) explanation of the research pragmatic, methodological and conceptual questions and challenges you are currently facing and which are related to the autumn school's topic.

Participants are expected to give an input of 7 to 10 minutes in one of the modules, and to reflect on their field and research situation in advance on the blog "fieldwork meets crisis". Please indicate in your exposé to which module you would like to contribute.

The deadline for blog contributions is 01 October 2020. The format of the blog contribution is flexible, yet shorter, more pointed discussion contributions are very welcome. Please include at least one image that illustrates the teaser of your post on the blog landing page, which is introduced here via the first sentences. We expect that all contributions include a short biographical author note. It is possible to integrate images, video or audio files. For suggestions for the style of your blog post, please visit www.boasblogs.org. Please send your contributions to fieldworkmeetscrisis@boasblogs.org.