https://climatechange.
Thursday, November 1, 2018
Decades of Visiting a Greenland Field Site with Children
In this recent blog post, Pernille Sporon Boving shares an interview with her 3 children about their thoughts on climate change and climate change actions. Interspersed among the Q&A are photos of the children from their Greenland field site over the last 2 decades. We hope to have Eric, Pernille, and the three children write a post about their experience as a family in the field.
https://climatechange.
https://climatechange.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Fieldwork, with and without kids, and Mom Guilt
DOCHPJONES@FemFieldSecrets has written a nice post about the trade offs of having children with you in the field, or leaving them at home. She also includes an honest look at Mom guilt as it intersects with fieldwork. Lovely photos of her daughters helping in the field as well.
https://fieldsecrets.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/does-field-work-make-me-a-bad-mom/
https://fieldsecrets.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/does-field-work-make-me-a-bad-mom/
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
Field work while parenting: an ideal summer in the mountains
By Chris Adlam
The bear really did it for me. Or was it the rattlesnake? Or maybe the daily menagerie of lizards, toads and garter snakes my 5-year-old held up happily for our inspection. I thought, “this is what field research while parenting should look like!”
My partner Rosemary, our two children (5 and 2) and myself were camping in the Klamath Mountains of Northern California for 6 weeks while I gathered data on the effect of wildfires on forest life. The Klamaths are easily the most remote area on the Pacific coast of the United States, typically ignored even by tourists, though the Pacific Crest Trail begrudgingly does a westerly detour through the high country. A few communities along the rushing Salmon River, relicts of the gold rush, were never connected to the grid. Bigfoot is everywhere. Tribal cultures, including the Karuk, Hoopa and Yurok, nurture a vibrant connection to ancestral lands marked everywhere by millennia of traditional care, from tanoak and sugar pine orchards to ancient village sites and spiritual trails.
The Klamaths are also exceedingly steep, poison oak is ubiquitous, mosquitoes are locally overwhelming and temperatures in summer soar to the three digits. So would our offspring take to living in this rugged place for half the summer, or would they be miserable? Would we all be miserable in this paradise? The last time we camped, we’d only gone a couple of days before hearing the tireless refrain of “I want to go home!”
This summer’s research was going to be critical to my PhD project. Though I have years of field experience, I had never organized a field season from scratch. I was also going to bring along two interns, whose needs I would have to attend to in addition to my family’s. Wanting to avoid last minute scrambles, I started organizing months in advance, including making packing lists, storing research and camping gear in plastic tubs for the day it would be needed, and really dialing in my protocol to avoid hang-ups. I designed my schedule to have a reasonable daily load so I could spend time with my family and also so I could be flexible if changes needed to be made in the field.
When we arrived at our destination, we had the entire campground to ourselves. We quickly investigated river access, which would turn out to be a key ingredient in spending a happy summer in the wilderness. Rosemary would go to the river with the kids every morning while I was off doing surveys. When I returned around lunch time, I would join them and sometimes take our oldest on a trip down the river in our inflatable paddle boat (though for all my organizational frenzy I hadn’t actually brought paddles!). Or we would build dams on small tributaries. We waded in search of water life, catching tadpoles, small fish, and, once, a lamprey. We collected dead butterflies and dragonflies and poked at scat piles. We would end our adventures looking for wood for the campfire, which was mostly unnecessary but very entertaining.
The kids were never bored and never complained about camping. They seemed to flourish and settled right in to our new rhythm. They became very relaxed playing and swimming in the river (with life jackets). Our youngest stopped needing diapers. They became experts at identifying poison oak, and no one got it, which was a miracle. Being in nature was relaxing and nurturing, for them and for us.
I love UC Davis as a school, but Davis is flat, surrounded by industrial agriculture, and generally a very unnatural place. Our time in the Klamaths was a perfect antidote for this. We visited an elk lick and walked on the deeply worn trails they made on their daily rounds; the scent of the herd was heavy and we could hear the cows calling in the distance. We cautiously investigated a rattlesnake, which seemed more intent on making a ruckus than actually striking. And then of course, there was the bear.
My oldest had asked to visit the elk lick at dusk, but we found it deserted. We continued to a meadow beyond, and as we squinted into the failing light, a dark shaped detached itself from the background. It was a black bear, and a good-sized one too. We watched it amble about, eating from abandoned pear trees. Though mosquitoes were settling all over us, I whispered that if we didn’t move, we’d be able to keep watching the bear. Still it didn’t notice us, and started walking on the trail that headed our way. I usually see bears running away when I’m driving. Never had I been in such a situation! When it got to about 20 meters from us, I decided to clear my throat, at which point it stood up on its hind legs, clearly confused (I was realizing what terrible eyesight they have!), and finally decided to go another way. For my son’s first bear encounter, this was the encounter of a lifetime!
So, it was a pretty ideal field-season-while-parenting, with science done and magical experiences all around. I almost wish there were some crises here and there to add nuance. Of course, I was incredibly fortunate that my partner was willing and able to come along so I didn’t have to be away from my loved ones for all this time. Not many people are this lucky. My protocol was also perfect since I started bird counts before dawn and wrapped up by noon, leaving the rest of the day to hang out with the family. If my protocol had been more demanding or required night-time surveys for example, this would have been difficult to reconcile with kids’ rhythms. It would have been challenging too if we’d had to move every day or every few days; the kids took some time to get used to a new place and would have been stressed by frequent moves (not to mention the logistics of packing and unpacking everything).
On the other hand, I think that part of the success was in fact not in spite of parenting but because of it. Of course, having kids inevitably means I can’t spend as much time on my work as non-parents. But I have learned to be better organized to make up for this, which is common for parents in academia (see for example my friend Jamiella Brooks’ essay on how to finish your dissertation while parenting: https://ideasonfire.net/dissertating-while-parenting/). I had backups for all my equipment, checklists, and built-in flexibility in my schedule. And I had excellent interns who were very understanding about my family needs. By the end of the field season, we were all already looking forward to doing this again next year!
The bear really did it for me. Or was it the rattlesnake? Or maybe the daily menagerie of lizards, toads and garter snakes my 5-year-old held up happily for our inspection. I thought, “this is what field research while parenting should look like!”
My partner Rosemary, our two children (5 and 2) and myself were camping in the Klamath Mountains of Northern California for 6 weeks while I gathered data on the effect of wildfires on forest life. The Klamaths are easily the most remote area on the Pacific coast of the United States, typically ignored even by tourists, though the Pacific Crest Trail begrudgingly does a westerly detour through the high country. A few communities along the rushing Salmon River, relicts of the gold rush, were never connected to the grid. Bigfoot is everywhere. Tribal cultures, including the Karuk, Hoopa and Yurok, nurture a vibrant connection to ancestral lands marked everywhere by millennia of traditional care, from tanoak and sugar pine orchards to ancient village sites and spiritual trails.
The Klamaths are also exceedingly steep, poison oak is ubiquitous, mosquitoes are locally overwhelming and temperatures in summer soar to the three digits. So would our offspring take to living in this rugged place for half the summer, or would they be miserable? Would we all be miserable in this paradise? The last time we camped, we’d only gone a couple of days before hearing the tireless refrain of “I want to go home!”
This summer’s research was going to be critical to my PhD project. Though I have years of field experience, I had never organized a field season from scratch. I was also going to bring along two interns, whose needs I would have to attend to in addition to my family’s. Wanting to avoid last minute scrambles, I started organizing months in advance, including making packing lists, storing research and camping gear in plastic tubs for the day it would be needed, and really dialing in my protocol to avoid hang-ups. I designed my schedule to have a reasonable daily load so I could spend time with my family and also so I could be flexible if changes needed to be made in the field.
When we arrived at our destination, we had the entire campground to ourselves. We quickly investigated river access, which would turn out to be a key ingredient in spending a happy summer in the wilderness. Rosemary would go to the river with the kids every morning while I was off doing surveys. When I returned around lunch time, I would join them and sometimes take our oldest on a trip down the river in our inflatable paddle boat (though for all my organizational frenzy I hadn’t actually brought paddles!). Or we would build dams on small tributaries. We waded in search of water life, catching tadpoles, small fish, and, once, a lamprey. We collected dead butterflies and dragonflies and poked at scat piles. We would end our adventures looking for wood for the campfire, which was mostly unnecessary but very entertaining.
The kids were never bored and never complained about camping. They seemed to flourish and settled right in to our new rhythm. They became very relaxed playing and swimming in the river (with life jackets). Our youngest stopped needing diapers. They became experts at identifying poison oak, and no one got it, which was a miracle. Being in nature was relaxing and nurturing, for them and for us.
I love UC Davis as a school, but Davis is flat, surrounded by industrial agriculture, and generally a very unnatural place. Our time in the Klamaths was a perfect antidote for this. We visited an elk lick and walked on the deeply worn trails they made on their daily rounds; the scent of the herd was heavy and we could hear the cows calling in the distance. We cautiously investigated a rattlesnake, which seemed more intent on making a ruckus than actually striking. And then of course, there was the bear.
My oldest had asked to visit the elk lick at dusk, but we found it deserted. We continued to a meadow beyond, and as we squinted into the failing light, a dark shaped detached itself from the background. It was a black bear, and a good-sized one too. We watched it amble about, eating from abandoned pear trees. Though mosquitoes were settling all over us, I whispered that if we didn’t move, we’d be able to keep watching the bear. Still it didn’t notice us, and started walking on the trail that headed our way. I usually see bears running away when I’m driving. Never had I been in such a situation! When it got to about 20 meters from us, I decided to clear my throat, at which point it stood up on its hind legs, clearly confused (I was realizing what terrible eyesight they have!), and finally decided to go another way. For my son’s first bear encounter, this was the encounter of a lifetime!
So, it was a pretty ideal field-season-while-parenting, with science done and magical experiences all around. I almost wish there were some crises here and there to add nuance. Of course, I was incredibly fortunate that my partner was willing and able to come along so I didn’t have to be away from my loved ones for all this time. Not many people are this lucky. My protocol was also perfect since I started bird counts before dawn and wrapped up by noon, leaving the rest of the day to hang out with the family. If my protocol had been more demanding or required night-time surveys for example, this would have been difficult to reconcile with kids’ rhythms. It would have been challenging too if we’d had to move every day or every few days; the kids took some time to get used to a new place and would have been stressed by frequent moves (not to mention the logistics of packing and unpacking everything).
On the other hand, I think that part of the success was in fact not in spite of parenting but because of it. Of course, having kids inevitably means I can’t spend as much time on my work as non-parents. But I have learned to be better organized to make up for this, which is common for parents in academia (see for example my friend Jamiella Brooks’ essay on how to finish your dissertation while parenting: https://ideasonfire.net/dissertating-while-parenting/). I had backups for all my equipment, checklists, and built-in flexibility in my schedule. And I had excellent interns who were very understanding about my family needs. By the end of the field season, we were all already looking forward to doing this again next year!
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Stumbling and toddling through (field)work: the first two years
By Seeta Sistla
Setting up micrometeorological stations 39 weeks pregnant and consumed by an early summer heat wave was less challenging than I had imagined it would be. Holding my month old child while trying to coordinate a small new field project proved more challenging – and ultimately unfeasible. In the 2 years since the birth of our first child, my learning curve combining motherhood with ecological research has been sometimes steep but always worthwhile.
I became a parent early in my career as an ecology professor at a small liberal arts college. Without the support of family due to a combination of distance and our own aging parents, my husband (also an academic) and I have been largely on our own to embark in the new world of parenting while also trying to build our field research-based careers. In the first year of my son’s life, my remote field work took a break while I focused on learning to be a new parent, navigating occasional stints of lone parenting while my husband was away for extended periods for his own research, 8-hour field courses which required (subtly) pumping milk in a class van, and those who remarked that parental leave is like a holiday (which I am grateful was balanced by others who recognized a period of reduced professional responsibilities after becoming a parent should be the norm rather than the exception).
While there have been distinct challenges – ranging from scheduling field and lab work around my son’s daycare schedule to attending a national meeting with a 14 month old while my husband’s research project took him across the world – we’ve also experienced a myriad of unexpected benefits. When my son has joined me in the field and lab, we have always been with students, whose curiosity and excitement is amplified by showing him why they’re doing the tasks at hand.
Setting up micrometeorological stations 39 weeks pregnant and consumed by an early summer heat wave was less challenging than I had imagined it would be. Holding my month old child while trying to coordinate a small new field project proved more challenging – and ultimately unfeasible. In the 2 years since the birth of our first child, my learning curve combining motherhood with ecological research has been sometimes steep but always worthwhile.
I became a parent early in my career as an ecology professor at a small liberal arts college. Without the support of family due to a combination of distance and our own aging parents, my husband (also an academic) and I have been largely on our own to embark in the new world of parenting while also trying to build our field research-based careers. In the first year of my son’s life, my remote field work took a break while I focused on learning to be a new parent, navigating occasional stints of lone parenting while my husband was away for extended periods for his own research, 8-hour field courses which required (subtly) pumping milk in a class van, and those who remarked that parental leave is like a holiday (which I am grateful was balanced by others who recognized a period of reduced professional responsibilities after becoming a parent should be the norm rather than the exception).
While there have been distinct challenges – ranging from scheduling field and lab work around my son’s daycare schedule to attending a national meeting with a 14 month old while my husband’s research project took him across the world – we’ve also experienced a myriad of unexpected benefits. When my son has joined me in the field and lab, we have always been with students, whose curiosity and excitement is amplified by showing him why they’re doing the tasks at hand.
 |
| Our son's first time in daycare was at the 2017 Ecological Society of America meeting. The childcare providers were wonderful. But frightened by the myriad of changes, he didn't last more than 2 hours. We attended the meeting together after that, which was challenging, but mostly successful |
Earlier this summer, I had my first major field excursion since becoming a parent– over 2 weeks in a remote area of western Alaska accessible only by float plane – while my son stayed home with my husband. Although I would love to introduce my son to the Arctic, because of the nature of my field work, traveling as a family is neither practical nor safe. While I deeply worried for how our son would deal with my travel and lack of communication, in the end, I am grateful to report it was me who suffered his absence rather than the reverse. While my husband had already been away for multiple weeks in far flung locales since our son was born, I had serious reservations about traveling for so long and with so little potential for contact when my son had just turned two. In retrospect, it was a liberating experience for our whole family, and I encourage other young parents to feel confident in their decision to continue to pursue their research ambitions flexibly – with or without their children as possible and desired.
I’m writing this piece from Namibia – where I am the trailing spouse for my husband’s work. We’ve visited beautiful national parks and an ecological research station in the Namib Desert, walked across dunes and besides one of world’s largest sea lion colonies. My son has picked up every imaginable iteration of scat and skeleton fragment, combed the red Kalahari sand, and exclaimed with joy when we found fluorescent scorpions on night hikes. But, finding childcare was a large stumbling block, leading to moments of profound frustration as we tried to manage work obligations while also entertaining a 2 year old (who was missing other kids) in an extended stay hotel where freely playing outside was impossible.
 |
| Exploring the Namib Desert. Scorpions, sand-hiding snakes, and the scorching sun could not stop our son. |
We ultimately found a combination of a playgroup and babysitter by asking US Embassy staff (who often travel as families) and local parents that we met in passing for advice. Learning from our experience, we now realize that when planning lengthy travel for field work, we must be proactive in finding a space and context that will accommodate the shifting needs of our growing son, which will likely mean extending our planned time away to accommodate finding necessities (i.e. a playgroup, safe and reliable childcare).
Parenting in general, and especially when trying to combine the endeavor with one’s work, requires remembering to laugh when things don’t go as planned. Like when we tried to participate in the opening event for artist David Buckley Borden’s ‘Hemlock Hospice’ instillation within the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research Site, which went well until we and had to step off to tour while our son wailed at not being able to touch the art.
 |
| Things were going well until they weren’t. A family visit to the Hemlock Hospice exhibit among the dying hemlocks in the Harvard Forest LTER, Pertersham, MA. |
Having our son has changed my relationship with my work and in many ways fundamentally shifted how I move through my days. Our tiny child also makes me all the more aware of the enormous environmental challenges he will face and motivates me as an educator while also encouraging me to live in the moment and continue to find wonder in the natural (and human) world.
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Funding Bringing Family
This blog post is going to be dedicated to assembling and sharing resources for obtaining funding for doing fieldwork with children. This can be grants that allow paying for childcare, grants for bringing a caregiver with you, etc.
- The Academic Mama Foundation - https://www.academicmamas.org. Offer both basic living and event based scholarships.
- American Association of University Women - https://www.aauw.org/what-we-do/educational-funding-and-awards/ - Many grants and fellowships allow a portion of the funds to be spent on childcare, including the dissertation year fellowship.
- The American Society of Mammalogists is considering a small increase in conference fees to cover caregiver expenses for those with children or other defendants. Update on results pending!
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Value of Child in the Field During Survey - Nature Conservancy Report
The Nature Conservancy co-organized an “Expert BioBlitz”, similar to the public BioBlitzs, but using professional biologists, to explore a 26-mile stretch of the Amargosa River, located in the Mojave Desert. One of the researchers brought their child. The organizers of the event found the child to be such a valuable addition to the effort, that they included the following paragraph in the official report.
Section VII. e. Inclusion of Children "BioBlitz events are sometimes organized to involve children and families, with the goal of increasing science literacy and public engagement. In contrast, the Amargosa River BioBlitz included primarily adult experts, and the invitation list was restricted to small group of well-trusted individuals. However, one of the participants during the Amargosa River BioBlitz was a seven-year old child. While our event was not geared towards children, we discovered that judicious inclusion of this one, very well- behaved and field-ready child allowed for survey work to occur unimpeded while providing a set of eyes closer to the ground. This facilitated discoveries that otherwise would not have been made."
https://www.scienceforconservation.org/products/amargosa-bioblitz-2017
Section VII. e. Inclusion of Children "BioBlitz events are sometimes organized to involve children and families, with the goal of increasing science literacy and public engagement. In contrast, the Amargosa River BioBlitz included primarily adult experts, and the invitation list was restricted to small group of well-trusted individuals. However, one of the participants during the Amargosa River BioBlitz was a seven-year old child. While our event was not geared towards children, we discovered that judicious inclusion of this one, very well- behaved and field-ready child allowed for survey work to occur unimpeded while providing a set of eyes closer to the ground. This facilitated discoveries that otherwise would not have been made."
https://www.scienceforconservation.org/products/amargosa-bioblitz-2017
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Geography Fieldwork With Family
"Fieldwork...With Family", published by The Geographical Review in 2001, is a lovely and poetic look at the ways doing fieldwork with a family can influence your experience. The authors include Paul F. Starrs (Distinguished Professor geography), Lynn Huntsinger (Professor of Rangeland Ecology and Management), and their two daughters (Carlin and Genoa) - all contributing their own perspective to this tale. This includes a detailed discussion of the logistics of extended international travel with a family, as well as having older children as field assistants.
Some of my favorite quotes include:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2001.tb00460.x
Some of my favorite quotes include:
"Let me also be honest and say that, at least for my family and others I know, working in the field together is excitement, a spice to life, the best form of wild ride." "Research was not as I had known it-not worse, but different." "Some of the Indiana Jonesish aspects of fieldwork do get shoved on the shelf when you are accompanied; but for those you can always go back alone, or break off for a stretch."Professor Starrs was kind enough to share an update about his daughters, they are now 27 and nearly 29. They're still stalwart fieldworkers, one in Kauai, Hawaii, and the other currently staff at UC Berkeley.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2001.tb00460.x
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Multiple Situations, Multiple Solutions - Nature article
This article, work–life balance: Kid-friendly digs, by Kendall Powell was published in Nature in 2014. It shares the stories of multiple researchers, in many different science fields, and how they all manage different types of fieldwork and travel with families.
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Diving for Data - Children nearby with Caregiver, Hawaii
Dive for Science is written by an accomplished oceanographer husband-wife team, Lauren and Simon, who have two children. This blog has many fantastic posts about doing fieldwork with children, traveling with children, backpacking with children, and about being a woman and a mother in this field. She includes gear and logistics recommendations.
The following series of posts is a lovely narrative about thier family traveling to Hawaii for data collection. They brought the grandparents along for childcare, and the kids got to experience living in Hawaii while the parents did data collection. She also includes many good suggestions for doing fieldwork with children successfully.
https://diveforscience.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/family-fieldwork-v1-0-north-carolina-edition/
https://diveforscience.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/family-fieldwork-v2-hawaii/
https://diveforscience.wordpress.com/tag/happy-baby-happy-life/
The following series of posts is a lovely narrative about thier family traveling to Hawaii for data collection. They brought the grandparents along for childcare, and the kids got to experience living in Hawaii while the parents did data collection. She also includes many good suggestions for doing fieldwork with children successfully.
https://diveforscience.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/family-fieldwork-v1-0-north-carolina-edition/
https://diveforscience.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/family-fieldwork-v2-hawaii/
https://diveforscience.wordpress.com/tag/happy-baby-happy-life/
Sunday, April 1, 2018
International, Tropical, Treetop, Single Parenting
Meg Lowman is an american-born international biologist and ecologist, with expertise in tropical rainforest canopy ecology, canopy plant-insect relationships, and constructing canopy walkways. She is also an educator, author, editor, adventurer, public speaker, AND single mother of two boys who she brought with her in the field. Those two boys have since both graduated from Princeton in the sciences.
This is a great article, talking about her accomplishments and how she managed this - http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2006/09/case-study-mom-scientist-canopy-meg
Here is an excerpt from the article "...Lowman's most important innovation was this: she turned longer field expeditions into family trips, taking her two sons to remote regions of four continents. "We have shared adventures in the Amazon, dangling from trees together, walking on canopy bridges, learning medicinal plants from a shaman, eating insects, spotting scarlet macaws, and just getting muddy," she writes in It’s a Jungle Up There. "Experiencing the world through three pairs of eyes has enriched my life far beyond relying on my own view alone." The article itself talks about more of the logistics.
I have had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Lowman speak twice, and read her first book, "Life in the Treetops". I found the stories shared very inspirational, and I often reflect on them as I am trying to navigate research and parenthood myself. I highly recommend the book, and It's a Jungle Up There, written in collaboration with her sons, is next on my list.
This is a great article, talking about her accomplishments and how she managed this - http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2006/09/case-study-mom-scientist-canopy-meg
Here is an excerpt from the article "...Lowman's most important innovation was this: she turned longer field expeditions into family trips, taking her two sons to remote regions of four continents. "We have shared adventures in the Amazon, dangling from trees together, walking on canopy bridges, learning medicinal plants from a shaman, eating insects, spotting scarlet macaws, and just getting muddy," she writes in It’s a Jungle Up There. "Experiencing the world through three pairs of eyes has enriched my life far beyond relying on my own view alone." The article itself talks about more of the logistics.
I have had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Lowman speak twice, and read her first book, "Life in the Treetops". I found the stories shared very inspirational, and I often reflect on them as I am trying to navigate research and parenthood myself. I highly recommend the book, and It's a Jungle Up There, written in collaboration with her sons, is next on my list.
Dr. Lowman is currently the Director of Global Initiatives, Lindsay Chair of Botany, & Senior Scientist in Plant Conservation at the California Academy of Sciences. In 2014, she joined this organization as the Chief of Science and Sustainability, and was responsible for the programs of scientific research and exploration. She was previously a Professor at North Carolina State University and the founding director of North Carolina’s Nature Research Center at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Her list of nicknames is almost as impressive as the list of honors, including “Mother of Canopy Research”, “Canopy Meg”, “real-life Lorax”, and the “Einstein of the treetops”.
Friday, March 30, 2018
Anthropology fieldwork with children, sometimes kids get sick
An article by Dr. Reetta Toivanen, an Adjunct Professor for Social and Cultural Anthropology and a Finnish Academy Research Fellow at the Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Helsinki.
She discusses how her children help her make contact with everyday people while traveling. She also shares a journal entry from a particularly harrowing travel time when her child fell ill.
http://allegralaboratory.net/fieldwork-with-children/
She discusses how her children help her make contact with everyday people while traveling. She also shares a journal entry from a particularly harrowing travel time when her child fell ill.
http://allegralaboratory.net/fieldwork-with-children/
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Anthropology Fieldwork with Kids in China - Book
There is an entire book about doing anthropology fieldwork in China with children, aptly titled "Doing Fieldwork in China…with Kids!", by Candice Cornet and Tami Blumenfield, which chronicles the experiences of 7 researchers.
Emily Chao PhD at Pitzer College provides an in-depth summary of the book here. The brief description of the book provided through Amazon.com is below.
"While many anthropologists and other scholars relocate with their families in some way or another during fieldwork periods, this detail is often missing from their writings even though undoubtedly children can have had a major impact on their work. Recognizing that researcher-parents have many choices regarding their children's presence during fieldwork, this volume explores the many issues of conducting fieldwork with children, generally, and with children in China, specifically. Contributors include well-established scholars who have undertaken fieldwork in China for decades as well as more junior researchers. The book presents the voices of mothers and of fathers, with two particularly innovative pieces that are written by parent - child pairs. The collection as a whole offers a wide range of experiences that question and reflect on methodological issues related to fieldwork, including objectivity, cultural relativism, relationships in the field and positionality. The chapters also recount how accompanied fieldwork can offer unexpected ethnographic insights.An appendix alerts future fieldworking parents to particular pitfalls of accompanied fieldwork and suggests ways to avoid these."
Emily Chao PhD at Pitzer College provides an in-depth summary of the book here. The brief description of the book provided through Amazon.com is below.
"While many anthropologists and other scholars relocate with their families in some way or another during fieldwork periods, this detail is often missing from their writings even though undoubtedly children can have had a major impact on their work. Recognizing that researcher-parents have many choices regarding their children's presence during fieldwork, this volume explores the many issues of conducting fieldwork with children, generally, and with children in China, specifically. Contributors include well-established scholars who have undertaken fieldwork in China for decades as well as more junior researchers. The book presents the voices of mothers and of fathers, with two particularly innovative pieces that are written by parent - child pairs. The collection as a whole offers a wide range of experiences that question and reflect on methodological issues related to fieldwork, including objectivity, cultural relativism, relationships in the field and positionality. The chapters also recount how accompanied fieldwork can offer unexpected ethnographic insights.An appendix alerts future fieldworking parents to particular pitfalls of accompanied fieldwork and suggests ways to avoid these."
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Anthropology Fieldwork with Children - Panel
This Inside Higher Ed article by Elizabeth Redden shares multiple stories of women conducting anthropology fieldwork with their children. These stories were from a panel on fieldwork and mothering at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in 2008. Great job AAA for hosting this panel!
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/25/anthro
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/25/anthro
Thursday, March 15, 2018
Jane Goodall, Too
"On March 4th, 1967, Hugo Eric Louis Van Lawick was born to Jane Goodall and Hugo van Lawick. Hugo was born in Nairobi during one of the pair's expedition. Their son was always called Grub ... Grub spent most of his childhood in the Serengeti, observing chimpanzees with his parents."
https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/jane-goodall--22
https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/jane-goodall--22
Sunday, March 11, 2018
Nocturnal Wildlife Fieldwork in India with Toddler
Inspiring post by Kaberi Kar Gupta about her PhD fieldwork in India with her child - http://lorises.blogspot.com/2012/05/couple-of-days-ago-i-got-email-from.html
Taking a Baby To Remote, Cold, Field Location
There is a wonderful article in the Chronicles of Higher Education about conducting field work in remote locations with a baby. Solid list of recommendations at the end.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Mothers-in-the-Field/45801
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Mothers-in-the-Field/45801
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