Blog | Fieldwork

In Jordan, many refugees from various backgrounds seek asylum. However, the limited resources and the interconnectedness of social, political, and economic crises, all exacerbated by climate change, lead to frustration and increased competition between the different refugee groups, as well as between the refugees and the host community. This has resulted in complaints and blame being directed at authorities and international actors, aggravating spatial conflicts within the refugee communities. This vignette shows some of the stories that CRC doctoral researcher Qusay Amer collected during his fieldwork in Amman, in the context of a workshop titled “Data justice for refugees.”

The parable of the blind men and the elephant can be found in Hindu, Buddhist as well as Jain texts and revolves around the endeavors of several blind men to […]

A thin line between ethics and aesthetics haunts these reflections on field research in an African city, approached through the positionality of a researcher from a European context. Based on some visual impressions encountered during the fieldwork, the researcher Francesca Ceola retraces the process of reorientation in a place geographically and culturally very far away from her habitat recognizing what she knows in what she sees. In doing so, she contests the abstraction of “going to do fieldwork” as separate from everyday scientific practices.