šŸŽ™ Fieldnotes Podcast Episode 15: Rethinking the ā€˜field’ in Fieldwork with Hannah Gibson

I know there was a separate thread about podcasts and other stuff to listen to, but maybe it makes more sense to post things individually and then link to them via the podcasts tag (hashtags work here more or less like they do on Twitter — for tags and categories). I’m still figuring out all the bells and whistles of this forum software, thanks for your patience!

This was another great episode with Hannah Gibson, who talks about her research on Rangi, a Bantu language, as well as the important topic of what we mean when we say ā€œfieldworkā€.

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I enjoyed this episode and have had quite a few discussions with students and other ā€œfieldworkersā€ about the exoticification of ā€œfieldworkā€. The stereotype that it’s only ā€œreal fieldworkā€ if it’s third-world or at least very far away from home. I share Hannah’s sentiment and try not to use fieldwork when talking about my own trips to New Guinea, but do use fieldwork when talking about ā€œnon-canonicalā€ fieldwork to try and even it out. Right now, I’m setting up my lab (mostly drawing students interested in language data collection, documentation, description, and diversity) and I’m thinking of playing in the ā€œDā€ theme instead of the obvious ā€œfieldwork labā€ choice.

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