BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//TERMINALFOUR//SITEMANAGER V7.3//EN VERSION:2.0 BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTART:20260827T120000 LOCATION:Braamfontein Campus East Postgraduate Research Hub, second floor, Solomon House DESCRIPTION:The Everything Everywhere All at Once Project led by the Department of Political Studies is excited to present our Semester 2 events series.Keeping Safe(r): Developing better policies and strategies for conducting fieldwork safely - 27 August
 
Universities in South Africa have increasingly elaborate protocols for processing and approving ethics applications from their staff and students. There are now detailed provisions when it comes to consent, confidentiality, and data protection, amongst others, yet there is one notable area where current ethics protocols have little or nothing to contribute: researcher safety. Researchers undertaking fieldwork are too often left to their own devices when it comes to ensuring their own safety and welfare while undertaking fieldwork. This lack of institutional care is particularly an issue when it comes to inexperienced postgraduate students who might be doing fieldwork for the first time, and who may be further constrained by limited financial resources and support networks.
 
This roundtable raises difficult questions about how to improve safety and support for researchers who are undertaking fieldwork in challenging spaces and environments. It invites researchers who have already undertaken fieldwork to reflect upon their own experiences and strategies, and to thereby contribute to an overdue conversation about what steps need to be taken by individuals and institutions when it comes to making fieldwork safer for researchers. Specific questions to be addressed include the following:

Planning for challenging fieldwork: What kinds of prior planning and support is required to help researchers ensure their personal safety in the field?
Youth, gender and/or race: How does who you are effect how your fieldwork goes? 
Personal safety and welfare: what kind of practical strategies can help when it comes to successfully navigating difficult environments?
When things go wrong: what kinds of responses and planning might be required if/when the worst happens? What might an effective distress protocol for researchers (and not simply their respondents) actually look like?   Rebalancing the scales: What can universities such as Wits (and individual supervisors and schools) do to improve safety and support for their people when they are in the field? 
What would it take for universities to care as much about the personal safety of their people as they do about their own legal liability?

  X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:The Everything Everywhere All at Once Project led by the Department of Political Studies is excited to present our Semester 2 events series.

Keeping Safe(r): Developing better policies and strategies for conducting fieldwork safely - 27 August


 


Universities in South Africa have increasingly elaborate protocols for processing and approving ethics applications from their staff and students. There are now detailed provisions when it comes to consent, confidentiality, and data protection, amongst others, yet there is one notable area where current ethics protocols have little or nothing to contribute: researcher safety. Researchers undertaking fieldwork are too often left to their own devices when it comes to ensuring their own safety and welfare while undertaking fieldwork. This lack of institutional care is particularly an issue when it comes to inexperienced postgraduate students who might be doing fieldwork for the first time, and who may be further constrained by limited financial resources and support networks.


 


This roundtable raises difficult questions about how to improve safety and support for researchers who are undertaking fieldwork in challenging spaces and environments. It invites researchers who have already undertaken fieldwork to reflect upon their own experiences and strategies, and to thereby contribute to an overdue conversation about what steps need to be taken by individuals and institutions when it comes to making fieldwork safer for researchers. Specific questions to be addressed include the following:



 

SUMMARY:Keeping Safe(r): Developing better policies and strategies for conducting fieldwork safely END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR