Category From the Field
From the Field: A drive through north western Afghanistan
by Magnus Marsden I am often asked what it is like to do fieldwork in Afghanistan. To give a sense of doing fieldwork in the country today, I provide an account of a two-day trip in the northwest of the country that I made in October 2017. The road connecting Mazar-e Sharif – northern Afghanistan’s […]
From the Field: Persian New Year in Yiwu and Iranian Special Tea in Karachi
by Magnus Marsden One of my most memorable evenings while conducting fieldwork in Yiwu, China in 2016 fell on 20th March, the evening of Nowruz, Persian New Year. Having put my three-year-old son to bed and waited for my wife to return from her Chinese language classes it was often a part of my fieldwork […]
From the Field: Mfuwe, Zambia
by Esther Mulders For the past two years, I’ve been volunteering in Zambia with Studio Zambia, a Dutch non-profit organisation that I co-founded in 2016 and currently co-run. The purpose of Studio Zambia is to provide creative means of self-expression to high school students in Mfuwe, Zambia. Studio Zambia is led by me and Annoek […]
From the Field: Havana, Cuba
by Evie Browne In the annual International Worker’s Day (Primero de Mayo) march past the Jose Martí statue in the centre of Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucion, the traditional signs and slogans of the Cuban Revolution were present, with added acknowledgements and recognition of Fidel. I took part in this year’s march as I am […]
From the field: Jeddah
Originally published on the University of Copenhagen’s Asian Dynamics Blog. by Magnus Marsden Notes from the field: Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 27/11/16-17/12/16 It seems like a long time since I bumped into two traders in their mid-forties from Afghanistan on a cold and wet spring night in Yiwu’s night market. As I chatted to […]
From the Field: American Textile Mill
by Caitrin Lynch **Originally published on The Standard-Times and on SouthCoastToday.com.** In response to calls for increased empathy after the divisive national election, many Americans will be making New Year’s resolutions in 2017 to experience life from the ‘other’ side. For all of 2016, I shelved my college professor routine and went to work in a textile mill. […]
From the Field: Herat
Notes from the Field: Regional Connectivity as a Site for the Ethnography of Diplomacy, Afghanistan 6/10/16 – 6/11/16 was originally published on the University of Copenhagen’s Asian Dynamics Blog. by Magnus Marsden During this last year of research I have had the opportunity of attending a number of most thought provoking meetings. I have been able […]