AHSS PhD Development Series

The next AHSS PhD Development Session will be a Roundtable discussion on ‘Fieldwork Challenges’. This workshop will take place on Wednesday 21 February 2024 at 2.30pm in the Kate O’Brien Room, Main Building, C1-079.

Dr. James Carr, Department of Sociology, has kindly agreed to Chair the Roundtable discussion. For this session, we will be joined by Tiba Bonyad. The Roundtable will give an overview of fieldwork challenges.

Conducting fieldwork in Iran is considered difficult for social researchers because of tense political relations between Iran and the international community, the state’s undemocratic nature, and the isolation of Iranian academic institutions (Rezai-Rashti, 2013; Rivetti & Saeidi, 2018; Shavarini, 2008). These aspects impact the field experience and create a vastly exaggerated and securitised approach towards researchers based at Western academic institutions.

In this roundtable discussion, Tiba will reflect on the fieldwork challenges she encountered while conducting social research about gendered biopolitics of assisted reproduction via egg donation in 2019 impacted and shaped her research structure. The intertwining factors of a power imbalance within the Iranian medical regime, gender discrimination directed towards female researchers, and the simultaneity of her fieldwork with national political protests in November 2019 led to a series of events that, in turn, characterised her approach to feminist research and the ethical strategies of data collection. Inspired by Abu-Lughod’s (2008) analytical concept of a ‘feminist halfie,’ she explains how researchers can use the local politics of uncertainty to make sense of the challenges and failures as forms of knowledge production and engage with alternative techniques for qualitative data collection.

You are all very welcome to attend. Use the form to register for the meeting.