Behind-the-Scenes: Conversations on Fieldwork Seminar

Religious experience in the field: On ‘going native’, self-censorship and secular erasure 

Speaker: Anneke Newman (University of Ghent, Belgium)

“While the discipline of anthropology encourages researchers to embed themselves in communities to learn as much as possible about their worldviews ‘from the inside’, in reality the expectation is often that invisible boundaries should be maintained between the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’. During my ethnographic doctoral fieldwork in Senegal, I got married and converted to Islam. In this presentation I explore how perceptions of overstepping such boundaries can compromise a researcher’s scientific legitimacy, especially as a PhD student. Indeed, for many years I felt I had to ‘self-censor’ my ontological transformation, especially in my writing, to ‘make it’ within British and European academia - shaped as they are by secular epistemology and Islamophobia. This has changed with my book Decolonising education in Islamic West Africa: Secular erasure, school preference and social inequality (Routledge, 2024) where I develop the argument that coloniality of secularity and secular erasure, or the silencing of spiritual and religious perspectives and theorising, represent a barrier to the social scientific understanding of, and development of appropriate policy in societies shaped by other-than-secular worldviews. I propose that these biases can and must be overcome through a post-secular and decolonial commitment to epistemic pluriversity”.

Dr Anneke Newman completed her doctorate at the University of Sussex. She is currently Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at the University of Ghent. She has previously held research and teaching posts at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the University of Antwerp and the University of Sussex. Her research interests include decolonial debates on development, epistemology of decoloniality, and religions as they relate to education, gender and global health policies in Islamic West Africa. 

The session is chaired by Claire Griffiths (French & Francophone Studies).  

All are welcome to attend this free seminar, which will be held online via Microsoft Teams at 18:00 BST (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.

, 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 March, 6-7pm 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)

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