Behind-the-Scenes: Conversations on Fieldwork Seminar Series

Collaboration is a two-way road, or regarding ethnographic work with antagonistic institutions

Speaker: María Victoria Guzmán (Leicester)
Chair: Claire Griffiths (Chester)

This seminar explores how researchers can deal with the emotional labour associated with working in hostile institutional contexts. It asks what tools researchers can count on, not only to carry out their fieldwork, but also to protect themselves without falling into the trap of defensiveness or recrimination. In other words, the seminar seeks to think through what happens when collaboration is denied, and how to maintain care-ful(l) ethics even in the face of carelessness.

Bio
María Victoria Guzmán is a researcher specializing in museums, contemporary art, communities and the micropolitical ties that bind all three. She is a PhD (c) Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, MA in Cultural and Creative Industries, King's College London, and has studies in Philosophy and Aesthetics and law. She is the founder of the art criticism blog El Gocerío, and regularly participates in academic journals and forums. She has been recognized with AHRC funding for her PhD research and FONDART for her work as an art critic, as well as other awards such as Haz Tu Tesis en Cultura, and has taught at Universidad del Desarollo and Universidad Católica de Chile. 

The focus of the Behind-the-Scenes 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. From the aspirations and expectations that precede fieldwork, through the messy and unpredictable circumstances of conducting the research, the scope of the series is wide and includes research design; funding; logistical preparations for engaging in fieldwork, dealing with unexpected challenges; the emotional impacts of the work, the multiple rewards of fieldwork collaborations, methods for analysing, cataloguing, and storing information during fieldwork, along with information retrieval from fieldwork. And in the aftermath of fieldwork, the series covers how we engage with the tortuous process of selecting what goes into the final polished output, which invariably includes excising valuable insights accumulated during fieldwork in the process. Behind-the-Scenes is a space where we can look at all those facets of fieldwork, including those which often remain unexplored and unspoken.