(Re)Conceptualising the Field

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This session of the QUALIFIE Working Group hosts a talk by Eleanor Knott (LSE).

In this talk, Eleanor Knott will draw together her field experience in Moldova and Crimea, her experience teaching qualitative methods, and her research interests in qualitative methods. These research interests span questions of research ethics, reconceptualisation of key concepts, and the role of intuition. Specifically, this talk will address: what is the field? What happens if we can’t return to it? What are our ethical obligations when the field changes? And how does our relationship to the field change as we, and our careers, change?

Speaker bio:

Eleanor Knott (she/her) is a political scientist and Assistant Professor in Qualitative Methodology in the Department of Methodology, LSE. Her substantive research interests include the politics of identity, citizenship, and democracy in Moldova and Ukraine. She also has research interests in qualitative research methods, primarily ethics of research. She has published in the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Qualitative Research, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Citizenship Studies and Democratization, among others. Her first book—Kin Majorities: Identity and Citizenship in Crimea and Moldova—was published with McGill University Press in 2022.