Feeling the Field: Building on Feelings and Experiences of Fieldwork through Body Mapping and Personal Archives - deadline 15th Jan

18-19th February 2025

The Fieldwork Support Network (FSN) will host a two-day event that includes NWDF's previously held 'Feeling the Field' workshop, along with a lecture, a roundtable discussion, and a poster display. Drawing on methods of body mapping and Latin-American feminist decolonial theory, this event will offer you the opportunity to explore and discuss your own fieldwork experiences, as well as help you reflect on the emotions you encounter while collecting data. Through this event, FSN invites you to discover new ways of navigating your fieldwork experiences, using artistic and emotional approaches that can benefit your research.

The first day of the event will consist of a keynote given by UEA Professor Sarah Barrow and documentary filmmaker Karoline Pelikan, followed by a roundtable between FSN and NWDF members Pietra Cepero Rua Perez (NWDF, Durham University), Kayonaaz Kalyanwala (FSN, UEA) and Jorge Ruiz Zevallos (FSN, UEA). The event is open to all (UEA and non-UEA), within the room capacity limits. The session will be held in the Bob Champion Lecture Theatre at UEA.

In the afternoon, a hybrid preparation session will be held to familiarise selected participants of the workshop with the concepts and theories around the body mapping method.

The second day will run in person only and be led by Lydoli Chávez Guerra (University of Nottingham), alongside Ana Laura Zavala Guillen (Northumbria University), Itzel San Roman Pineda (University of Sheffield), Pietra Cepero Rua Perez (Durham University) and Zubaida Umar (University of Leeds), members of the Feeling the Field Colectiva. Drawing from the concept of bolsa mandinga and inspired by the patuá - an Afro-Brazilian amuleto (amulet) which was created as a ‘visceral object’ - this workshop seeks to invoke emotion, resilience, as well as personal and collective empowerment through creative practices and healing of its participants.

For more information, to register and to see the call for posters, see here.

The deadline to register and submit a poster abstract is 12pm, 15th January.