RUB Research School

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Author
Name Keßler, Mira
mira.kessler@rub.de
Research field Ethnography, Media & Communication Studies, Journalism Studies, Media Development
Career stage doctoral researcher
Home university/institution Ruhr-University Bochum
Department/Research unit at home university/institution Media Studies
Chair/Working group at home institution International Media Systems

International activity
Country Germany
Location Bochum
University Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB)
Fund Research School PR.INT
Type of activity workshop/summer school
Period starts 21-10-2021
ends 22-10-2021
Keywords ethnography, fieldwork, journalism, qualitative methods, media development, barriers, activism, on the ground research, dialogue between academia and practice
Report How to move beyond established practices:
Impressions from the Autumn School “Disrupted Ethnography”

Due to the ongoing pandemic, ethnographic researchers are facing a special challenge: closed borders and travel bans are disruptions we have to deal with. But there are also other disruptions which we have always been confronted with but whose questions are still seeking answers. Going to usually different living contexts than ours brings questions of how to build trust, how to tell other people’s stories, how to unpack concepts and biases we have in our minds and how to report from within. According to the motto “thinking out of the box”, we started a dialogue between academics and practitioners, like journalists and activists, who have comparable ways and challenges of working in a field. The guiding questions were: What can we learn from each other? What new approaches can junior researchers develop that cannot be found in methodological manuals?

Based on our research projects and practical experiences, we spent 2 days discussing the possibilities and limits of our ethnographic approach. This time we learned from the experiences of the invited journalists and activists who, like us, have to explore certain fields and groups of people. The approach of comparing journalists and ethnographic researchers is not new and has already been discussed by the social anthropologist Ulf Hannerz. According to him, they are "neighboring groups engaged in a somehow parallel pursuit." (Hannerz, Ulf (2004): Foreign News. Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondents. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 226). In exchanges with Jignesh Patel (India), Ramyata Limbu (Nepal), Mariam Barghouti (Palestine) and Mosa'ab Elshamy (Morocco), we young scholars were able to look beyond our academic book covers. Dominic Boyer, Professor in anthropology at Rice University in den USA, united two roles in himself, as he is also a writer, filmmaker and podcaster. He spoke in his keynote about his understanding and experiences with ethnography in disrupted times. He gave suggestions how to answer the question what the intellectual challenges and creative opportunities of working in disrupted fields are.

We were able to exchange ideas on our laptops in an hybrid event with colleagues from all corners of the world - such as India, Palestine, Nepal, Turkey, Morocco, the USA, Phillipines, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Brazil, Portugal, UK and many more.
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