Navigating the challenges of fieldwork and childcare: Revisiting ‘muddy glee’

Abstract

This commentary emerges from our collective interest in, and reflections on, the multiple ways in which parents working within Development Geography in UK academia negotiate the complexities of combining periods of overseas fieldwork with family life (see also Hope et al., 2020;Jenkins, 2020; DevGRG undated). Here, we bring our varied experiences of navigating these challenges (emotional, bureaucratic, and practical) into conversation with Bracken and Mawdsley's (2004) 'Muddy glee,' highlighting the ways in which a recognition of academics', especially female academics', childcare responsibilities has been largely absent from discussions around conducting fieldwork, specifically development fieldwork in the global South. Now nearly 20 years old, revisiting Bracken and Mawdsley's paper reminds us of both how far we have come in terms of addressing the significant gender inequalities within Geography, but also of how far there is still to go, as many of their reflections -especially around promotion and working cultures -remain depressingly pertinent in 2022.

Impacts of COVID‐19 on social work teaching and learning in Bangladesh

“…Working with individuals who were victims of domestic abuse, had mental health issues, or had intellectual difficulties was challenging (Pratama et al, 2020). Bastia et al (2022) supports the finding here that fieldwork was significantly delayed due to the limited availability of fieldwork agencies to sponsor it. As a result, students educated in social work in the early 2020s lack practical skills.…”

Returning‐home fieldwork in China with a dear friend: Friendship, personal safety, and diversity

“…There have been ongoing dialogues calling for greater visibility and support of different forms of accompanied fieldwork. For example, Bastia and her colleagues (Bastia et al, 2022) have recently reflected on caring responsibility in overseas fieldwork. This article furthers the conversation by focusing on the accompaniment of pre-existing friends.…”

“…As Beer and Gardner noted, friendship has remained a shadowy region of the theoretical landscape because of the light shed by anthropologists on kinship and familial relations (2015, p. 425). For instance, researchers have extensively examined the implication of being accompanied by families (Bastia et al, 2022; De Silva & Gandhi, 2018), partners (Lunn & Moscuzza, 2014; Pink, 1999), co‐researchers (Cupples & Kindon, 2003; Monk et al, 2015) and mentors/assistants (Anwar & Viqar, 2017; Lawrence & Dowey, 2022; Temple & Edwards, 2016; Turner, 2010) on shaping fieldwork processes and outcomes. Despite the tendency to perceive pre‐existing friends as with fewer credentials than other types of non‐professional companions, the spatially and culturally varied understandings and practices of friendship also merit noting.…”

Achieving co-presence when together and apart: Hybrid engagements and multi-modal collaborative research with urban indigenous youth

“…International travel became a possibility for the PI after travel restrictions eased. Meanwhile, the research associate opted against international travel as possible delays linked to getting COVID-19 and having to quarantine abroad could have negative childcare implications, an example which illustrates the impact of academic work on care responsibilities and how such issues need to be better mitigated within fieldwork-intensive research projects (see Bastia et al, 2022; for the impact of the pandemic on women academics in the UK, see Carruthers Thomas, 2022). In our case, we opted for distributing work tasks based on our location and availability – with the research associate focusing on preparation of training materials and analysis of fieldwork results and the PI- and Bolivia-based team running in situ training sessions and overseeing data generation on the ground – keeping each other updated synchronously through Zoom meetings and asynchronously via WhatsApp.…”