A life course approach to the field and fieldwork

Abstract

Life course scholars have theorised the relationship between individual life trajectories and geographic phenomena such as migration, partnering, reproduction and locational choice. They have engaged less frequently with the politics of fieldwork or the interrelationship of the life course and the field. Feminist geographers, in contrast, have made significant interventions into the social dynamics of fieldwork (e.g. relationships between researchers and participants), but less so on the life trajectories that precede and follow the fieldwork encounter. This special section thus contributes to both life course geographies and ongoing feminist interventions into the fieldwork process. In understanding fieldwork experiences through a life course approach, the contributors to this special section simultaneously deepen and systematise much of feminist geographic research on fieldwork. Their work highlights how life events and turning points, including those before, during and beyond fieldwork, can profoundly change – or be changed by – research experiences and outcomes. They also reveal how the trajectories of researchers, participants and the field itself become interconnected within specific historical times and contexts.