Ethnography Today:
The Importance of Being There
Montecatini Terme, Italy, 27-29 July 2027
Convenors: Italo Pardo & Giuliana B. Prato, University of Kent, UK
Scientific Committee: Gary Armstrong (City, St George’s University of London, UK), Hana Cervinkova (University of Maynooth, Ireland), Jerome Krase (Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA), Karolina Moretti (National Technical University of Athens, Greece), Italo Pardo (University of Kent, UK), Giuliana B. Prato (University of Kent, UK), Matthew Rosen (Ohio University, USA), Enkelejda Sula-Raxhimi (Saint Paul University, Canada)
Ethnography remains essential to rigorous social research, providing insights that short-term or abstract methods cannot achieve. This conference focuses on how traditional ethnographic approaches can be maintained while adapting to the digital, interconnected, and rapidly changing nature of contemporary social life.
At its core, ethnography depends on sustained engagement with people and their everyday lives. Long-term, immersive fieldwork enables researchers to move beyond formal accounts and public narratives to observe social life directly, to build trust and develop a deeper understanding of people’s experiences. Extended presence can reveal hidden meanings, backstage realities, and sensitive information that may not emerge through occasional interviews or rapid research. Long-term engagement also develops linguistic and cultural understanding, allowing researchers to recognise local expressions and meanings that may be difficult to translate. Unexpected events and everyday interactions can generate important insights, making serendipity an important part of ethnographic research. Life histories, genealogies, recordings, visual and sensory observations can further connect individual experiences with broader social and historical changes. This “slow science” approach allows patterns to emerge over time, while participant observation and strong rapport provide access to otherwise concealed realities.
This traditional “gold standard” can be usefully updated. Contemporary ethnographers may need to study social life across both physical and digital environments. Participant observation may now involve interacting with people in their homes, places of work and communities as well as through group chats, online forums and social-media environments. Digital archives, messaging histories, digital network mapping, audio, visual, and geolocation data can complement conventional fieldnotes and create richer forms of “thick description”. This means that the boundaries of “the field” have become more fluid, for communities are now connected to wider technological, financial and social networks. Therefore, researchers may need to engage both physically and digitally.
The Conference advocates combining the depth and rigour of classical ethnography with carefully adapted digital and interdisciplinary methods, where needed. It aims to encourage discussion on:
- The “State of the Art” of ethnographic fieldwork, including innovations in longitudinal studies and the integration of digital techniques while maintaining a holistic commitment to the “natural” aversion to abstraction.
- The meaning and implications of the ethnographer’s “dual presence”.
- New forms of multidisciplinary collaboration, particularly between anthropology, sociology and related social sciences and humanities.
- Participants as collaborative interlocutors.
- Cities as important laboratories for studying governance, migration, capital, citizenship, cultural interaction and sustainable development.
- The importance of translating ethnographic findings into policy and public debate. Through public engagement and media, ethnography can translate lived experiences into practical understanding, helping bridge the gap between formal governance and everyday realities and contributing to positive social change.
OUTLINE AND AIMS
Ethnography matters. The unique value of ethnographic fieldwork as a foundation for informed analysis and rigorous theoretical development cannot be overstated. This conference recognises that real-world complexities demand an updated “methodological bedrock” of ethnographic engagement. It will bring together global researchers to assess the state of the art and discuss the way ahead.
The Enduring Power of Long-Term & Classical Fieldwork: Being There
The product of long-term, in-depth research based on direct and sustained social contact with agents, ethnography involves the disciplined and deliberate witnessing and recording of human events.
Today, the findings of ethnographic research attract increasing attention among academics, professionals and decision-, law- and policy makers. A substantial body of publications has evidenced the range of novel analytical and theoretical insights that ethnography can offer. Key paradigmatic challenges have been highlighted by works published in the Series “Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology”, the Palgrave Handbook of Urban Ethnography (2017), the Special Issue of Diogène on Le positionnement de l’anthropologie urbaine (2015), and Urbanities-Journal of Urban Ethnography and its Supplements.
Ethnography Today
Ethnographic methods necessarily evolve in response to fieldwork demands. The Conference posits that updating classical ethnography means preserving the rigour of long-term immersion while adapting traditional toolkits for contemporary field sites, for ethnography is complemented, not polluted, by the adoption and adaptation of digital tools and of field techniques from other disciplines, according to specific research perspectives, aims and geographic locations.
Extended temporal presence, deep hanging out, first-hand observation and, hopefully, participation, linguistic fluency, and in-depth case material yield unique analytical insights that today’s fashionable “rapid” methodologies cannot replicate. Today, the geographic field is complemented by access to the socio-technical ecosystem. While the epistemological depth of long-term, immersive fieldwork remains the foundational gold standard of ethnographic research, in this hyper-connected, digital, and rapidly changing world, our methodological toolbox ought to include, where needed, the use of digital resources.
The Gold Standard
- The “Slow Science” Advantage: Extended time allows structural patterns to emerge from chaotic daily data, helping to grasp implicit or hidden meanings.
- Participant Observation: Piercing the façade & Deep Rapport. Long-term presence moves the researcher past idealised public narratives into backstage realities. Experiencing the world through engaged presence not just interviews. Building trust that allows informants to share sensitive, taboo, or vulnerable truths.
- Linguistic Nuance: Years in the field build fluency in local idioms, humour, semantics and untranslatable concepts.
- Serendipity as Method: The most critical insights often come from unplanned, unscripted moments of daily life.
- Genealogies, Life Histories and Audio-visual Evidence: Mapping kinship and personal trajectories to reveal macro-historical shifts. Recording interviews and conversations, when acceptable. Recording sounds. Taking photographs and video of significant events.
- Sensory Ethnography: Capturing the sights, sounds, smells, and spatial dynamics of a place.
Updating the Toolkit
- Participant Observation and Dual Presence: Hanging out with interlocutors both in their physical homes and inside their group chats or virtual forums.
- Socio-Technical Ecosystems and Continuous Ambient Presence: The “village” or “neighbourhood” is now understood as a space permanently wired into global networks, financial flows, and digital platforms. Long-term immersion requires physical co-presence 24/7 combined with staying connected via messaging apps that allow on-the-spot and multi-year, uninterrupted field relations. Thus, the ethnographic relationship becomes an ongoing coexistence backgrounded by smartphones, messaging platforms, and shared digital environments.
- Digital Kinship, Genealogies and Archives, including Network Mapping: Tracing lineages of online communities and subcultures. Using chat histories and personal media archives to build modern life histories.
- Thick Description in the Digital Age, including integrating audio, screenshots, memes, and geolocation data into classical descriptive fieldnotes.
- Participants as Collaborative Interlocutors.
- Networked fields: Fieldwork follows the ramified routes that connect “the field” diachronically and to the world at large.
Conference Tracks & Themes
We invite scholars, practitioners, and researchers to submit original research addressing:
- Ethnographic Fieldwork: The “State of the Art” – Innovations in longitudinal studies and the integration of digital techniques while maintaining a holistic commitment to the “natural” aversion to abstraction.
- Multidisciplinary Contaminations: Cooperation between anthropologists, qualitative sociologists, and scholars from other social sciences and humanities has proved to enrich the classic anthropological paradigm without it losing disciplinary rigour. This invites further cooperation.
- The City as Laboratory: As the global population shifts decisively toward urban centres, the future of the social sciences is inevitably urban-bound. Cities serve as laboratories for international regulation, capital management, and intense cultural interaction, making them essential sites for addressing sustainable development and the widening gap between citizenship and governance. Exploring cities as hubs for capital management and ethnic interaction, and the role of ethnography in driving sustainable urban development.
- From Research to Policy: Strategies for translating findings for stakeholders and policymakers to bridge the divide between governance and the lived experience of citizens.
- Public Ethnography and the Media: The role of field-based knowledge in public debate and its contribution to the betterment of our world.
Revised papers will be considered for publication in the open-access, peer-reviewed Urbanities-Journal of Urban Ethnography, either as individual articles or as part of a Special Issue. If applicable, collections of revised papers may be considered for publication in the Series Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology.
DEADLINES
Deadline for Paper Proposals: Title, name and affiliation of the author/s, and a 200-word Abstract should be submitted no later than Monday 1st March 2027.
Deadline for Panel Proposals: Proposals should include: 1) the Panel Title, the name and affiliation of the panel’s convenor/s and 150-word Abstract; 2) At least 4 papers (including the name and affiliation of the author/s, titles and 200-word Abstracts) and should be submitted no later than Monday 1st March 2027.
Registration Deadline: Accepted Participants are expected to pay their registration fee no later than Friday 7th May 2027.
REGISTRATION
Work starts in the morning of 27 July and ends in the evening of 29 July.
REGISTRATION FEES
The Fee for the event will cover B&B Hotel Accommodation for 4 nights (en-suite room, arrival 26 July, departure 30 July) and the Conference Registration, inclusive of coffee breaks, light lunch, conference folder, access to conference facilities, administration, certifications.
Standard Fees:
• Single room, €700 per person.
• Double/Twin room, €580 per person.
• The Conference Registration Fee, exclusive of accommodation, is €370.
Concessionary Fees (postgraduate students and low-income participants):
• Single room, €560 per person.
• Twin/Double room €480 per person.
• The Conference Registration Fee, exclusive of accommodation, is €250.
Travel and living expenses are not included.
Registration Deadline: Accepted Participants are expected to pay their registration fee no later than Friday 7th May 2027.
TRAVEL AND VISA INFORMATION
- Travel Information: Montecatini Terme is easily reachable by train and by air. Details on travel information are available here
- Visa Information: Italy is in the EU Schengen area, so Schengen Visa rules apply to enter for the purpose of the School. Further information and useful links are available here