Navigating Fieldwork in the Social Sciences: Stories of Danger, Risk and Reward, Paperback

This edited collection of first-person stories about risk in the field offers an arsenal of practical examples where fieldworkers have attempted to negotiate the complexities and risks of field research. Field research can be a risky and dangerous journey where the line between safety and danger can be crossed in quick time, often with little warning. These risks manifest in diverse and novel ways. They can be physical and psychological, ephemeral and enduring. They can impact the researchers, participants, collaborators and interviewees. Indeed, they can condition the very foundation of our processes of knowledge production. Fieldwork is no small stakes game. Covering research from Afghanistan, Chad, DR Congo, Greece, the Horn of Africa, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Palestine, India, Indonesia, Mexico, The Netherlands, Vietnam and Australia, each chapter highlights diverse, eclectic, raw and vulnerable narratives about risks experienced before, during and after the conduct of this research. This book is of great value to inexperienced and experienced fieldworkers alike.

About author(s):Phillip Wadds is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He has spent the last decade undertaking ethnographic and field-based research examining various features of nightlife in Sydney with an enduring focus on its policing and regulation.
Nicholas Apoifis is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His 2017 manuscript Anarchy in Athens (Manchester University Press), was based on unprecedented access to one of the world's most militant anarchist movements and involved Militant Ethnography.
Susanne Schmeidl is Senior Lecturer in Global Development at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. She is a scholar practitioner with field experience in Afghanistan. Her research focuses on understanding drivers of conflict and forced migration as well as grassroots peace efforts.
Kim Spurway is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. She has worked on five national surveys commissioned by the United Nations on the socio-economic impact of landmines and unexploded ordinance on post-conflict countries.