Fieldwork – "leaving one's home institution in order to acquire data, information or insights that significantly inform one's research" (Kapiszewski et al. 2015) – is a crucial component of social science research. But what is fieldwork? And more crucially, when and why should we do it? And how do we prepare for it? In this first session of the term, QUALIFIE hosts Lauren MacLean from Indiana University, co-author of the go-to guide for fieldwork in the political sciences Field Research in Political Science to speak about field research, its analytic benefits and how it contributes to our understanding of politics.
Lauren M. MacLean (PhD University of California-Berkeley, 2002) is the Arthur F. Bentley Chair and Professor in the Department of Political Science. She is an affiliate faculty member of Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop, the African Studies Program, the Committee on Native American and Indigenous Studies, and the Center on Philanthropy. Her research interests are comparative political economy and public policy, with a focus on the politics of state formation, public service provision, and citizenship in Africa and the U.S. MacLean is also known nationally and internationally for her work on the topic of field research methodology. She has co-authored the prestigious book Field Research in Political Science (Cambridge University Press, 2015) with Diana Kapiszewski and Ben Read.
The Zoom link will be shared upon registration.