How do social scientists enter, experience and study ‘the field’? What can we learn by being there, and what challenges and dilemmas do we encounter along the way?

This year's AISSR Harvest Day explores different approaches to fieldwork across the social sciences. Through keynote lectures, short research films and interactive Field Labs, we will explore everything from archival and digital ethnography to filmmaking as research and fieldwork in challenging settings.

Join us for an afternoon of exchanging experiences, reflecting on research practices and connecting with colleagues from across and outside the AISSR.

Keynote speakers

The afternoon will feature keynote contributions by Rivke Jaffe, Yatun Sastramidjaja and Saskia Bonjour, drawing on their research and experiences with different forms of fieldwork.

Rivke Jaffe 

Multispecies ethnography: Doing fieldwork with security dogs

It is often argued that ethnography’s specificity lies in its transformative potential, which follows from its radical openness to other lifeworlds.

Rivke’s keynote discusses what such conceptual, practical and emotional openness and attendant transformations might involve when doing ethnographic fieldwork with (scary) animals.

Saskia Bonjour

Textual encounters | Thrills and challenges of fieldwork in the (online) archive

Written sources may not be the first thing we think of when we think of “fieldwork”. In this talk, Saskia will explain that to her, archive work, like other forms of fieldwork in the social sciences, constitutes a human encounter charged with emotions.

Based on her research on family norms in migration politics, Saskia will reflect on practical and ethical questions around access, abundance, and bias in record creation and collection, and hopes to convey how thrilling archive research can be.

Yatun Sastramidjaja

Dancing with the algorithms, on the somatic experience of digital ethnography

What happens to ethnographic research – and the ethnographer – when fieldwork consists of scrolling on a smartphone and interlocutors are made up of pixels? Digital disembodiment and loss of time, it turns out, provoke sensory experiences that allow a researcher to feel herself into online publics and understand the politically inexplicable.

Step into the Field: Videos & Interactive Field Labs

What does fieldwork actually look like in practice? Through a series of short films, researchers take us behind the scenes of their work. Their stories provide the starting point for three interactive Field Labs:

Walking the Fine Line | Jaron Harambam & Nanke Verloo

How do you navigate difficult conversations, conflicting perspectives, and questions of trust as a researcher? In a short video, Jaron Harambam shares his experiences of researching conspiracy theories and navigating the public struggle over truth. Building on his story, Nanke Verloo joins him for an interactive Field Lab, bringing her experiences of researching tensions between citizens and public institutions.

Film as Research | Martha Dietrich & Albert Kuhn

What happens when the camera becomes a research tool rather than simply a way of documenting findings? In a short video and interactive Field Lab, Martha Dietrich and Albert Kuhn explore how filmmaking can open up new ways of observing, experiencing, and understanding the field, while raising questions about perspective, representation and their own position as a researcher.

Fieldwork at Risk | Abbey Steele & Erella Grassiani

Why venture into the field when research involves risks, uncertainty, or difficult ethical choices? Drawing on their fieldwork experiences, Abbey Steele and Erella Grassiani explore the challenges of conducting research in sensitive settings, the dilemmas researchers face and the insights that can only emerge through direct engagement with the field.

The AISSR Harvest Day is open to Bachelor's, Master's and Research Master's students, researchers, and anyone with an interest in fieldwork and the social sciences.

Further details about the programme, including the schedule and additional participants, will be announced in the coming weeks.