Launched in April 2018, The New Ethnographer is an inclusive online project dedicated to making fieldwork safer, healthier and more ethical for researchers around the world. Our contributors are ethnographers whose fieldwork experiences have gone far beyond what their universities prepared them for, or were willing to address in the aftermath.

Through this site, you will find essays and blog posts about fieldwork challenges related to safety and risk, health and wellbeing, ethics and gender; reading lists; information about our global mentoring network; forthcoming events; and details of our workshops, trainings and University fieldwork-safety audit service.

The impact that long term research in the field can take on the health and wellbeing of those conducting fieldwork has led to concern over university preparedness for fieldwork. In the wake of several high profile cases of detainment, torture, and death of doctoral students,  why is it that academic institutions are seemingly so unwilling to engage with these challenges critically, supportively or constructively? We are among many of our peers whose challenges have been met with a silence from our institutions. We find support and solidarity among our friends and peers, none of whom are ‘qualified’ to really help us navigate these issues with the weight of the academy in mind.

We rely on a diverse range of contributions, thoughts, testimonies, and advice in order for the project to work. To contribute, send us your pitch.