The Messy Reality of Fieldwork Across the Social Sciences and Humanities Volume One

The Messy Reality of Fieldwork Across the Social Sciences and Humanities Volume One: Surviving and Thriving in the Face of External Pressures provides readers with a window into the messiness of fieldwork resulting from external pressures researchers face. This book, and its sister volume, seeks to provide researchers with a more realistic perspective about fieldwork and how the unexpected can be overcome and even turned into an advantage.

The book is centred on a series of narratives encompassing everything from civil unrest/conflict, being detained by the authorities, pandemics, and sexism, to ethics review boards, amongst others. The narratives talk about the reality of fieldwork versus the idealistic theory of it. Finally, they explore what can be learned from unplanned happenings. The narratives are drawn from multiple disciplines, based on the work of early and not so early career researchers. They encompass the globe, both in the settings of the authors’ research and the work environments in which they are based.

This book will be of interest to all those undertaking fieldwork. It should also be of interest to research student supervisors and anyone who has ever wondered about the lives and welfare of researchers during their fieldwork.