Fieldwork has always been at the core of the Africanist project. But what happens when access to the field, or to the archives, interlocutors, and data that constitute it, is constrained? Africanist fieldwork has long been shaped by constraint, from the post-independence coups of the 1960s and 1970s that restricted scholarly mobility to contemporary visa regimes, bureaucratic gatekeeping, uneven archival infrastructures, and declining funding for humanities research. This roundtable examines how emerging scholars, PhD students, candidates, and recent PhDs are remaking research practice under these shifting conditions.
This session positions method and fieldwork as crucial sites of intellectual production rather than preliminary stages of research. Participants will explore how archival silences, restricted repositories, and unanticipated collaborations compel them to rethink what constitutes evidence. When textual archives are inaccessible or incomplete, how do researchers work with oral histories, botanical specimens, ritual objects, visual culture, or embodied knowledge as sources? How does the meaning of textual material, shaped by scholarly interpretation, shift when read alongside material artifacts that require different forms of analysis and ethical care?
The roundtable centers emerging scholars’ fieldwork experiences as significant. The session acknowledges them as agents of methodological innovation through varied encounters with restricted-access settings, fraught research environments, and alternative sources. As knowledge production across the continent expands, scholars confront a new configuration of ruptures that involves ethical negotiations over material objects, linguistic mediation, and research designs, reshaped by political and institutional uncertainty. These experiences reveal how disruption does not simply obstruct inquiry but reshapes questions, evidentiary hierarchies, and collaborative practices within African Studies.
With no formal papers required, each participant will present a brief reflection, in three to five minutes via PowerPoint, on how moments of rupture in their fieldwork reshaped their methodological approach and research design, followed by a moderated discussion about the questions and concerns that emerged from those experiences. The roundtable, therefore, interrogates how research adapts to constraints and how African Studies continually remakes itself in response to shifting local and global landscapes, transforming ruptures into possibilities.
While the roundtable will include a limited number of participants, those interested in participating are invited to submit:
A 100-word application (in MS Word format) that includes your name, institutional affiliation, and three to four questions/statements that shaped your fieldwork experience.
Closed for new submissions.
Fieldwork Under Constraint: Emerging Scholars Navigating Rupture and Remake (Closed for Submissions)
