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“Sanctioned Research”: Sanctions, Fieldwork, and Knowledge Production  

Speaker: Sardana Nikolaeva (University of Toronto, Canada)

“I want to open a space for a critical discussion of the explicit and implicit effects of economic sanctions on knowledge production and dissemination processes. As a trained anthropologist who conducted fieldwork with the communities living under the sanctions regime of the Russian Federation, this session will invite you to contemplate the following questions about fieldwork, labour, and knowledge production:

Despite the necessity to scrutinize and interrogate economic sanctions' political and ideological problematics, we will consider more specifically what conditions sanctions regimes can create within targeted societies to complicate or impede scholarly inquiry. We will ask what are the multifaceted effects sanctions have on fieldwork and scholars conducting them? How may the positionality of a researcher facilitate and/or complicate “sanctioned research”? How can sanctions create the conditions for fieldwork and research to become non-permissible within academia? How can “sanctioned research” reveal existing limitations of various disciplines (e.g., anthropology) and how it is shaped by specific hegemonic political and economic conditions? Finally, how can we use knowledge produced on sanctioned societies as a tool to critique sanctions not as “an alternative to traditional warfare but instead an expansion that has potential to leach into all aspects of civil society within targeted nations and beyond” (Davis and Ness 2022, 9)?” 

Dr Sardana Nikolaeva earned her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Manitoba (Canada). Her research interests include Indigenous politics, resource politics, pollution studies, extractivism, politics of recognition, economic sanctions, epistemic violence and research ethics (particularly in the Indigenous Arctic). Sardana was the inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow of Ziibiing Lab (Global Indigenous Politics Collaboratory) in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto (Canada). Sardana is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Toronto, working on a collaborative project about Digital Divide in Canada and its intersection with Indigenous Self-Governance. She is also teaching courses on global Indigenous experiences at the Departments of Anthropology and Political Science.

All are welcome to attend this free seminar, which will be held online via Microsoft Teams at 18:00 GMT (UK time). You will need to register in advance to receive the online joining link. Please click on the Book Now button at the top of the page to register.



Programme
Autumn Term

Wednesday 6 November, 6pm-7pm online on Microsoft Teams: Carolina Angel Botero, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, University of Pennsylvania. Thinking through the geographical limitations of the “field” (fieldwork in Colombia)

Wednesday 20 November, 6pm-7pm online on Microsoft Teams: Sina Plücken & Nico Wilkins, University of Cologne. “Coming Out” in the Field: Reflections on Queer Ethnographic Positionalities (fieldwork in Cameroun and Namibia) 

Wednesday 11 December, 6pm-7pm online on Microsoft Teams: Brian Valente-Quinn, University of Colorado Boulder. 
Aesthetic readings through field methods: on studying theatre and performance in Francophone Africa (fieldwork in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire)

Spring Term 2025

Wednesday 15 January, 6-7pm online on Microsoft Teams: Ruxandra Păduraru, University of Bucarest, Romania. Fieldwork as Emotion-work (Chilia Veche, Romania)

Wednesday 12 February, 6-7pm online on Microsoft Teams: Sardana Nikolaeva, University of Toronto, Canada. "Sanctioned Research”: Sanctions, Fieldwork, and Knowledge Production (Russia)

Wednesday 12 March6-7pm online on Microsoft Teams: Raphael Verbuyst  (PhD, University of the Western Cape, South Africa and Ghent University, Belgium). Navigating failure before, during and after fieldwork

Wednesday 9 April, 6-7pm online on Microsoft Teams: Mario Cepeda, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Ethics and Reflexivity in Ethnographic Interviewing: Experiences from Fieldwork in Post Conflict Peru

Summer Term 2025

Wednesday 30 April, 6-7pm online on Microsoft Teams: Anneke Newman, University of Ghent, Belgium. Religious experience in the field: On ‘going native’, self-censorship and secular erasure (Senegal)

Wednesday 6 May, 6-7pm online on Microsoft Teams: Deniz Yonucu, University of Newcastle. Crafting Refusal: The Ethics and Politics of Representation in Research (Turkey)

  


Behind-the-Scenes: Conversations on Fieldwork is a programme of informal academic talks and events organised by the Fieldwork Research Group in the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (ILCS).  The focus of the Conversations on Fieldwork seminar series is an exploration of the processes we engage with on the journey towards producing the published research output, covering all the stages involved in fieldwork in geographical, virtual or un-sited fields. Our online seminars provide a real-time platform open to scholars from around the globe. Each session includes a short slide presentation of up to 30 minutes. Invited speakers draw from lived experiences of navigating the spaces and situations that constitute their fieldwork universe to share findings and experiences which are then discussed with participants. All attendees are invited to engage actively and supportively in the week’s Conversation sharing either from their own experiences, or for participants planning to undertake fieldwork-based research for the first time, from their own expectations.


For further information on the Behind-the-Scenes: Conversations on Fieldwork programme please contact the series convenors, Professor Claire Griffiths and Dr Kaya Davies-Hayon