The workshop ‘Negotiating gender and other identities: research, researchers and respondents’ was held on 11-12 November, 2019 at Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus. The workshop was organised by IMC researcher Theresa Ammann (Postdoc, Aarhus University), Sara Lei Sparre (Assistant Professor, Aarhus University) and Mona Chettri (Postdoc, University of Western Australia) with financial support from IMC (as well as DID and the Anthropology Department, AU).

The workshop focused on different forms of identity (gender, race, sexuality, religion etc.) and its impact/influence on different components of ethnographic fieldwork interactions (researcher, respondents and outcomes), with a special focus on the response of respondents to these identities. This two-day workshop was attended by nine participants from different academic institutions across Europe and Asia and was successful in creating a platform for discussion and interaction between academics at different career stages and academic disciplines. The paper presentations showcased a diverse and rich range of cases which illustrated the different opportunities and challenges that emerge as a result of the different, implicit as well as explicit, identities of the researcher. The main themes of discussion that emerged during the course of the workshop were race and racial privilege, negotiating outsider-ness/insider-ness, contesting structural identities, promiscuity and ‘appropriate distance’, entanglements and affect (mental, physical) to name a few. The papers presented will be collated for a special issue for international, peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal during 2020.

For more information, please contact:

Theresa Ammann, Postdoc
School of Culture and Society
Department of Anthropology