29 October 2026, 11:00-12:00 (UK time)

 

Register to avoid disappointment

 

Ethnography’s Ghosts: Spectres, Archives, Ancestors with Emer. Professor Paul Atkinson.

This talk introduces Ethnography’s Ghosts, edited by Emilie Morwenna Whitaker and Paul Atkinson. Their previous collaborations include Reflexivity and Social Research (Palgrave 2022), Ethnographic Explorations (Routledge, 2023) and methodological papers.

The conduct of an ethnography involves gathering and curating material representations. Field notes and journals are among the most significant, and most prized, of such traces. They are intermediate texts that mediate between observed events, ethnographic recall, and theoretically-informed reconstructions. We keep them safe: a personal archive rather than a ‘dataset’. Ethnographers can and do return to the field in person. But they can also, in some sense, return to the field by revisiting and re-reading the notes. If we revisit our past field research through memory and the archive, we encounter traces of participants, faded memories of events, perhaps even spectres of our past, younger selves.

 

Paul Atkinson is Emeritus Profesor of Sociology at Cardiff University. Recent publications  include Sara Delamont  and Paul Atkinson Ethnographic Engagements,Routledge 2021. Previous books include the SAGE quartet: For Ethnography , Thinking Ethnographically, Writing Ethnographically, and Crafting Ethnography .The fifth edition of Martyn Hammersley and Paul Atkinson Ethnography: Principles in Practice will be published by Routledge in 2027. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Learned Society of Wales.

Emilie Morwenna Whitaker is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Salford, where she is Director of Graduate Studies in Health and Social Studies.  Her recent publications include Reflexivity in Social Research, and Ethnographic Explorations: Surrender and Resistance, both with Paul Atkinson. She has conducted fieldwork in a social work department, and with soul midwives. She is currently on extended secondment to the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions, where she has been training civil servants to undertake primary in-house research through ethnographic fieldwork.

 

Register to avoid disappointment

 

Organised by the European Educational Research Association, Network 19: Ethnography, the webinar is hosted by Professor Nicole Brown, University College London.

The ECER Network 19 provides a space for researchers interested in educational ethnography, at all career stages. Our ethnography webinar aims at facilitating dialogue, particularly concerning methodological innovation, ethnographic research ethics, and ethnographic insights into different fields of education.

Our webinars create a space for dialogue on ethnographic methods and practice. Participating in a webinar, you will meet an educational ethnographer presenting their current work. You will have an opportunity to discuss with fellow ethnographers after the presentation and get into dialogue with the presenter.

Register to avoid disappointment