Purpose: This article presents fieldwork perspectives and research reflexivity gained from the cross-national research team, with the aim of promoting better qualitative research practices in transnational research. It focuses on how the team incorporates diverse cultural perspectives and insider and outsider roles to enhance the research in the…

The notion of the ethnographer as participant observer, as an active agent rather than passive observer, is well established within conversations about method and methodology. Less well explored is the extent to which the inherent curiosity and inquisitiveness of the ethnographer might be reciprocated: how might this be established and how might…

Correspondence studies are popular tools for assessing discrimination against minorities, for example, in the labor market. Typically, two fake "Curriculum Vitae" (CVs) are sent to multiple job openings. The CVs are equivalent except for a mark identifying the disadvantaged. While it is straightforward to establish discrimination from…

This article explores how researchers adapt to disruptions that cost them access to their field sites, advancing a uniquely sociological perspective on the dynamics of flexibility and adaptation in qualitative methods. Through interviews with 31 ethnographers whose access was preempted or eliminated, I find that adaptation varied systematically…

Ethics review committees have become a common institution in English-speaking research communities, and are now increasingly being adopted in a variety of research environments. In light of existing debates on the aptness of ethics review boards for assessing research work in the social sciences, this article investigates the ways in which…

This paper analyses the phenomenon of the death of informants. Based on his own experience with the long-term (1999-2016) research of Voyvodovo -- the only Czech village in Bulgaria, the author shows what the death of one's informants means for the research and the researcher. The author argues that any long-term fieldwork entails emotional…

This article argues that localizing access -- a general ethical principle -- is a workable strategy that can be used in approaching participants in qualitative research across disciplines and in coping with respective institutional practices in order to collect meaningful data. This article is based on the autobiographical, lived experiences of…

In this article, we interrogate the concept of methodological 'failures' as they arise during fieldwork, in the process of collecting empirical data. We highlight how the techniques of validity horizon matrices and power analysis can be used as methodological tools to illustrate moments in the fieldwork process where these 'failures' occur and to…

This article is a response to the methodological problems I experienced during fieldwork. It follows that the article is an experiment of creating alternative possibilities for thinking about ethnocentrism as a phenomenon in transformation in a contemporary, innovative, higher educational setting. Throughout the article, I argue for the…

Ethnography as a methodological approach presents the fieldworker with many ethical crossroads throughout the research process. This is because of the unique position that ethnographers find themselves in, the environments that they research and the relationships which are formed. This paper presents four confessional vignettes from a broader…

The proficiency in vernacular has long been a methodological ethos pervasive among field researchers and--despite new dynamics of fieldwork--still overshadows discussions related to collaboration with translators and interpreters, which are either marginalized or hidden within the category of a 'research assistant'. The purpose of this study is to…

In qualitative methods, there are various approaches that can be used to answer particular social questions, for example ethnography and case study. Two studies conducted by different researchers in China and Australia using these approaches were described and analysed in order to find out their similarities and differences in terms of…

This research methods case focuses on producing and analyzing field notes of a fieldwork in lower secondary schools in Denmark. In this case, I deal with the questions of how to do fieldwork and how to produce and analyze field notes in ways that are more alert and open to the affective and spatial dimensions of the everyday life in schools. The…

World-wide responses to the global pandemic, such as travel restrictions, border closures and lockdowns, have posed new challenges to researchers. For qualitative researchers conducting fieldwork, gathering data in person can be inapplicable (Howlett, 2021). My research investigates English as a Foreign Language (EFL) pre-service teachers' beliefs…

As part of a larger Nordic study, I got to study six pupils who had moved to Norway in their late teens: the students whom I call Ahmed, Bahar and Nargis, Mohammed, and Helen and Mikeline respectively from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea allowed me into their life worlds. In addition to a linguistic ethnographic approach where I observed…