Call for Papers

24th October 2026 (Online Conference - Zoom)

Fieldwork in Times of Precarity: Building Resilience

This one-day conference, curated by the BFE EDI team, asks how we navigate fieldwork in a world shaped by multiple forms of precarity. Fieldwork in conflict zones, in areas afflicted by natural disaster, in communities experiencing violence or persecution are vivid examples of the trauma and emotional toll that fieldworkers can experience; but institutional, political, and social pressures can bring vulnerability to fieldworkers in any site.

How can we cope with precarity and build resilience? This conference is an opportunity to share experiences, build supportive networks, and explore radical approaches to fieldwork grounded in care and wellbeing. Mountz et al. (2015) emphasise “self-care and the creation of caring communities” as integral to scholarship and as a form of inclusive resistance. Hilder and Shlomit Sofer (2025) discuss the importance of queer networks and the particular need for community building during the Covid-19 crisis. The emotional and embodied dimensions of fieldwork are often overlooked within methodological discussions. Markowitz’s 2021 article details their experience of ‘misery and violence’ during fieldwork in El Salvador, describing both the difficulty of openly discussing emotional responses to fieldwork situations and the long-term impact on their health and wellbeing. The significance of discussing emotion and mental ill health or illness as integral to fieldwork methods should be applicable to any site, not just those encounters with horror and violence. Attending to these experiences should be recognised as a fundamental aspect of fieldwork across all sites and settings, creating space for more honest, ethical and sustainable research practices.

We welcome interventions which respond to precarity and resilience in fieldwork, including but not limited to:

• Duties of care towards ourselves as researchers, as well as towards the communities with whom we work,
• Ethics and methodologies of care,
• Vulnerability, wellbeing, and the emotional dimensions of fieldwork,
• Strategies for coping with precarity, including building support networks, activism, and forms of resistance,
• Conducting research in precarious field sites, including those affected by environmental change, conflict, pandemics, displacement, institutional insecurity, or rapidly shifting social and political conditions),

Reflections on resilience, adaptation, and sustainable research practices. The format for interventions can be sessions of 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes of questions), panels of 3 related interventions (90 mins in total including questions), as well as roundtable discussions of 4–5 shorter interventions (10 mins each + 20 mins questions). We welcome other types of creative submissions; please detail these in your proposal if they depart from the traditional format. Abstracts for individual papers should be no more than 250 words. For panels, please submit a panel/roundtable description (up to 250 words) along with abstracts of each individual paper (up to 250 words). Please submit to your proposals via the submissions link below:

BFE Autumn Conference 2026 – Link to Submissions Form 

Submission deadline: 31st July 2026.

Notifications will be sent by 31st August 2026.

Bibliography:

Dominey-Howes, Dale. 2015. “Seeing ‘the dark passenger’—Reflections on the emotional trauma of conducting post-disaster research” Emotion, Space and Society,17:55–62.

Hilder, Thomas R. and Daniele Shlomit Sofer. 2025. “Queer Community Building, Academic Activism, and the Labour of Care: An Introduction, Contemporary Music Review, 44:3, 149-166.

Markowitz, Ariana. 2021. “The Better to Break and Bleed With: Research, Violence, and Trauma” Geopolitics, 26:1, 94-117.

Mountz, Alison, Anne Bonds, Becky Mansfield, Jenna Loyd, Jennifer Hyndman, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ranu Basu, Risa Whitson, Roberta Hawkins, Trina Hamilton, and Winifred Curran. 2015. “For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University” ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 14:4, 1235-1259.

Organisers and Programme Committee

Stina Homer, Open University

Min Yen Ong, University of Oxford

Peter Underwood, Bath Spa University

Cassandre Balosso-Bardin, KU Leuven

Ashely Stein, Edinburgh Napier University