XClose

UCL Changemakers

Home
Menu

Improving the Anthropological Research Process

This case study explores a student-led project focussed on improving the anthropological research process, particularly for PhD students.

26 July 2021

Case study by Manuela Sadik

What was the aim of your project?

This project had two main aims. 

  • To address the challenges students often face when participating in the anthropological research process, e.g. long term (12-18 months) ethnographic fieldwork. 
  • To use this project as a pilot study for the development of an institutional support framework featuring extracurricular components. As part of this aim, there were specific ideas we wanted to promote:
    • The idea that pre-fieldwork support should cover elements that currently fall beyond the remit of classical and institutional understandings of research training (e.g. gender, risk, safety and wellbeing in the field)
    • The idea that a strong cohort is integral to PhD programmes which have a significant fieldwork or off-campus component.

What did you do?

The key milestone of the project was a post-fieldwork reintegration retreat, in which eight members of our PhD cohort spent four days debriefing, thinking, and writing about fieldwork, and the challenges of the post-fieldwork PhD process.

The writing sessions simultaneously integrated both writing and debriefing: after every writing block, we took 5 minutes to discuss our writing process and the challenges we were facing, or to create a plan of action with our neighbour. This really helped to create a focused and collaborative atmosphere.

What were the main successes of the project?

The post-fieldwork reintegration PhD retreat was by all accounts a success, demonstrated by the highly positive feedback provided by participants in their evaluation surveys. For example, all participants agreed that they would recommend a similar retreat in the future, giving us a strong case and precedent to run the retreat annually.

The writing sessions, in particular, were very successful. In fact, they were so successful that we have now implemented them into a weekly routine within our department! Moreover, following the completion and success of the project, future projects and outputs have been planned and working groups have been established. Such projects include written pieces (blog posts, recommendations to the department), informal departmental saloon sessions and a departmental panel discussion for pre-fieldwork students.

Some comments from retreat participants in response to the evaluation survey question 

Fantastic, productive, resourcing, invigorating, empowering
A wonderful experience, on an intellectual and personal level. I think this is a very important and beneficial exercise for PhD students - especially on return from the Feld. As someone who had a diffcult experience during the first two years of the PhD (in terms of anxiety, depression, fear of fieldwork, isolation - all related to the PhD) - it's the friendships I developed with members of my (and other) cohort(s) and the support I received and gave in return that has helped me through those years. The retreat was a way of re-invigorating old and creating new relationships within the cohort. It provided a non-judgemental, supportive space.

 

What difficulties did you face during your project? What would you do differently?

We would have liked to extend our stay! If we were to do this again, we would also aim to create less outputs. Our project was very ambitious, and the preparation for the retreat was very time-consuming for all involved (as it required many hours of reading each other's material for feedback and writing).

Through the evaluation surveys, many participants also suggested numerous improvements that we would take into consideration if planning future retreats. For example, less debriefing time and more time for writing, a venue that can accommodate both social space and individual working space, a longer retreat, and more logistical support from the department or a more equal distribution of tasks to alleviate the organisational load from the lead student. 

What impact has your project had? On whom?

The project has provided an invaluable opportunity to pilot a fieldwork curriculum (pre- and post- fieldwork). We think that this will make a positive difference to anthropology PhD students and hence to the anthropology department as a whole, especially supervisors. The retreat has significantly strengthened our PhD cohort. We have been more involved in each others’ work since returning from it and have implemented similar writing sessions within the department. We look forward to sharing advice and guidance with the outgoing PhD cohort in the upcoming panel discussion in December (2017). 

Our experiences with this project have also been disseminated beyond our PhD cohort to the wider department via the departmental magazine, ‘Anthropolitan’ , and will be the topic of many upcoming blog posts. Perhaps it will inspire other students within the department to organise similar sessions. We are recommending that the retreat and panel discussion become annual events in the department.