On Monday 17 May 2021 from 17:00 to 18:30 on Zoom
The Antropologen Beroepsvereniging (ABv) (Dutch association of anthropologists) and Landelijke Samenwerking Studenten Antropologie (LaSSA) (Dutch network of anthropology students) jointly organize the webinar “Studying and Teaching Anthropology in Times of COVID-19: Experiences and Best Practices“, the second episode in the ABv Webinar Series.
COVID-19 turned many aspects of university teaching and learning upside down. Dealing with the pandemic not only meant a switch to online teaching and learning, but also not being able to go abroad and conduct fieldwork. Students had to become creative in finding new ways of doing fieldwork – by adopting new (online) methodologies, engaging with new topics, and going to other places. Supervising and supporting students also changed, supervisors had to find out how to guide students through the insecurities that studying anthropology from a distance entailed.
In this webinar, which will have the character of a roundtable discussion, we discuss the practical (im)possibilities of teaching, learning and doing anthropology in times of a pandemic with two students, Käthe Ploeger (Utrecht University) and Nadia Hageman (Radboud Universiteit), Marie Louise Glebbeek (assistant professor, coordinator of Bachelor project at Utrecht University), and Yke Eijkemans (lecturer and tutor at Utrecht University). Rather than discussing the urgent questions about what this means for the future of anthropology and fieldwork, we will explore what we learned from doing anthropology during a pandemic in more practical ways: What are the possibilities and limitations of fieldwork during a pandemic? What are the consequences for the research participants that we have access to, and the claims that we can make? What are the best practices – that we should keep in post-pandemic times – of doing and supervising fieldwork in times of COVID-19? What are the logistical and practical issues students and supervisors run into, and how to deal with them? What did we learn about support systems and care for/among students?
With this roundtable discussion we hope to inspire students, lecturers, and educators to explore and engage in new ways of doing, learning and teaching anthropology.
Nadia Hageman started with the premaster Anthropology and Developmental studies at the Radboud University in Nijmegen in September 2020. She just finished her fieldwork for her thesis about drillrap. For four weeks she followed the movements, thoughts and conversations of third and fourth graders at a VMBO-school near Rotterdam to find out what drillrap meant to them.
Käthe Ploeger studies Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. She just returned from her fieldwork on Terschelling, where she investigated the relationship between touristification and placemaking among inhabitants of Terschelling.
Yke Eijkemans works as a lecturer at the Cultural Anthropology department of Utrecht University. She is also tutor, internship coordinator and general coordinator of the Academic Professional program of the Cultural Anthropology master Sustainable Citizenship.
Marie-Louise Glebbeek works as an Assistant Professor at the Cultural Anthropology department (Utrecht University) and coordinates the Bachelor project, during which most students (want to) go abroad to conduct fieldwork.