Doing Ethnography Remotely

The Center for Global Ethnography announces Doing Ethnography Remotely, a video-interview series focusing on how researchers have used remote methods in their work.

Through interviews with six ethnographers, the Center’s co-directors Sharika Thiranagama (Anthropology) and Sylvia Yanagisako (Anthropology) explore how scholars have used digital and analog tools to study communities online and how they have accessed social spaces from a geographic distance. 

From across the disciplines, the researchers speak candidly about past projects and how digital tools and techniques have shaped their research questions and findings. Each interview concludes with practical advice aimed at graduate students interested in deploying remote methods in their own work. 

Taken as a whole, the series begins a dialogue on what ethnography may look like after the COVID–19 pandemic.

Topics include: the use of film and video for collaboration and participant observation; telephone interviews; the use of Skype and Zoom for recorded interviews; chat groups; embedded research in online forums and communities; social media analysis; digital accessibility; the ethics of digital representation and privacy; the importance of field notes; working with political and environmental conditions that limit a researcher’s physical presence. 

All interviews are currently available to view here on the Center’s webpage. 

Interviewees and Panelists:

Yarimar Bonilla, Professor; Department of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Hunter College; Program in Anthropology; Graduate Center of the City University of New York 

Irus Braverman, William J. Magavern Faculty Scholar; Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of Geography; University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Christine Hine, Professor of Sociology, University of Surrey

Heather Horst, Director of the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University 

John L. Jackson, Jr., Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication; Richard Perry University Professor of Communication, Anthropology, and Africana Studies; University of Pennsylvania 

Sarah Pink, Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab; Professor, Department of Human Centered Computing; Department of Design; Monash University

A live Q&A session with these panelists is scheduled for June 5th at 1PM (PDT). More information can be found here.