This residential training on 8th-11th April integrates pre-fieldwork, post-fieldwork graduate students and faculty in an ambitious and interactive learning environment. Given that PhD students receive a range of prescribed teaching, the STAR 1 programme has been designed specifically to respond to the perceived needs of pre-fieldwork students – in direct interaction with those who are writing up in their final year and key members of staff [Dr Daniel Knight (St Andrews), Dr Maya Mayblin & Dr Jiazhi Fengjang (Edinburgh), & Dr Arnar Arnarson (Aberdeen), plus one guest speaker from rest of UK Social Anthropology]. As such the outcomes of the programme cannot all be prescribed in advance. However, one of the key aims and outcomes is to build a sense of cohesion between and amongst the full range of Scottish Social Anthropology students.
A draft format of the programme, and full content is indicated in the draft outline of the programme below:
Monday 8th April
12:00 Arrival
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:00 Introductions and Practical Arrangements
15:30-17:00 Taking Good Fieldnotes (led by Maya Mayblin)
17:00 Free Time
18:00 Dinner & Free Time
Introductions
In this joint session we will provide opportunity for staff and students to introduce themselves and get to know each other. Staff will provide guidance on the format of the week and students will have the opportunity to say what points of methodology/fieldwork/ethics they feel need most attention – allowing some sessions to be tailored toward meeting student needs.
Taking Good Fieldnotes
Maya Mayblin
In this joint session we will explore both the necessity for, and myths that surround fieldnotes. We will discuss different types of notes and diaries, mnemonic techniques, and tips for sharing and storage. This session will involve working in small groups to practice our skills at fieldnote taking. Having read one another’s fieldnote entries, we will meet to compare and contrast their differences and similarities. Doing this will give you a better understanding of your particular fieldnote taking abilities and blindspots.
In preparation for this session you are invited to read the following article:
Jackson, Jean. ‘I am a fieldnote: Fieldnotes as a symbol of professional identity’. In
Roger Sanjek (Ed.) Fieldnotes. The Making of Anthropology. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Tuesday, 9th April
10:00-11:30 Initial group formations and developing student-led agenda (DK)
11:30-12:00 Break
12:00-13:00 Student Group Work
13.00-15:30 Lunch & Free time
15:30-17:00 STAR star lecture – Professor Elisabeth Kirtsoglou
18:00 Dinner
19:00 Roundtable: Positionality and Ethical Considerations. This is an informal Q&A-style discussion session of potential positionality and ethical issues arising in fieldwork. Staff and students are invited to discuss real-world concerns and potential scenarios. Questions or queries can be sent to Daniel (dmk3@st-andrews.ac.uk) in advance for ‘anonymous’ discussion, or raised on the day (led by Daniel Knight).
Initial Group Formations
Issues to be explored by the students will be brainstormed, and clustered into four or five areas. Groups of students will form around each main cluster.
Student Group Work
Throughout the week groups will be working toward an innovative activity on a theme central to conducting successful fieldwork. Time is built into the programme for groups to work on their activity that will be delivered over the course of sessions on Thursday. Participants are encouraged to be as creative as possible to deliver an interactive session (staff are willing to take part!).
STAR Star Guest Lecture:
Elisabeth Kirtsoglou
Blurb + Readings TBC
Wednesday 10th April
10.00-11:00 Group Work
11:00-11:30 Break
11:30-13:00 Counter-Mapping (Zeynep Oguz)
13.00-14:30 Lunch
14:30-16:00: Visual and Graphic Methods (led by Rachel Smith)
16:00-18:00: Group Work/Free Time
After dinner: Socialisation, Games, Conversation
Counter-Mapping: Disruption Dominant Representations of Space Through Art, Activism, and Anthropology
Zeynep Oguz
Who makes the maps – who tells the stories – that come to define our world? How can we imagine new worlds beyond colonial, imperial, and national representations? Maps are by no means just representations of reality. Maps articulate statements that are shaped by social relations, discourses and practices, but these statements also influence them in turn. Hence, maps are always political. In this workshop, we will examine new interpretations of our worlds. Counter-mapping, also called counter-cartography, resistance mapping, and remapping, re-presents information, histories, identities, and places toward liberatory ends. Any act of map-making (conceptual, physical, material, or visual) is about relations of power and to countermap is to redistribute or reclaim power. In this workshop, we will also work in small groups to explore different cartographic, conceptual, and creative interventions, in ways that problematize colonial, imperial, and national spatial imaginations; render borders porous, unstable, and unacceptable; and reimagine land, landscape, and environment as well as our relations to them.
Please use the following link: https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fforms.gle%2F7GYTVUTcS9WLEpfY6&data=05%7C02%7Cdmk3%40st-andrews.ac.uk%7C91870c68337d40bbe33408dc4cda8454%7Cf85626cb0da849d3aa5864ef678ef01a%7C0%7C0%7C638469748636077864%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=KZJG9e%2Fk66AMTynCjESumQiprynbnFu2lUQjri5rH08%3D&reserved=0
Visual Anthropology, Photo-Elicitation, and Participatory Visual Methodologies
Rachel Smith
Anthropologists have long used film/video, photography, and even drawing in fieldwork as part of their fieldnotes and data collection, but it is less often used as a basis for our interactions with our interlocuters. Ahead of the workshop you will be invited to employ visual methods to record aspects of your experience at the Burn. Then, in workshop, we will use the visual media you have created as a basis to explore some creative but lesser-used methods employed by anthropologists; photo-elicitation interviews, and photo-voice. This workshop will give you a chance to reflect not only on the potential of visual media for your personal fieldnotes, data collection and analysis, but also as a generative means of engaging with your research participants.
Student Group Work
Further development of the areas to be addressed by students, and final preparation for their presentation / activity sessions the next day
Thursday 11th April
10:00-11:30 Practical Session 1
11:30-13:00 Practical Session 2
13.00-14:30 Lunch / Free Time
14:30-16:00 Practical Session 3
16:00-17:30 Practical Session 4
18:00 Depart The Burn
ABOUT THE HOSTS
Dr Daniel M. Knight is Reader in the Department of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies at the University of St Andrews. He has held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Durham University. He is author/(co)editor of six books: Energy Talk: Green Knowledge from Greece’s Silicon Plains (Cornell, 2025), Porous Becomings: Anthropological Engagements with Michel Serres (Duke, 2024), Vertiginous Life: An Anthropology of Time and the Unforeseen (Berghahn, 2021), The Anthropology of the Future (Cambridge, 2019), Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe (Routledge, 2017), and History, Time, and Economic Crisis in Central Greece (Palgrave, 2015). Daniel co-edits History & Anthropology journal and convenes the ASA’s Anthropology of Time Network.
Dr Maya Mayblin is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. For the past 20 years she has conducted research in Brazil, and more recently in Scotland. Maya’s work explores themes of ritual, politics, kinship, gender, and sexuality. She has published widely on the anthropology of religion and is the author of Gender, Catholicism, and Morality in Brazil: virtuous Husbands, powerful wives (2010, Palgrave Macmillan), director of the documentary film Vote of Faith (2014), and co-editor of The Anthropology of Catholicism: a reader (University of California Press, 2017). Maya’s current research is on secular death practices in Britain, exploring how tensions between abstract values of dignity and equality emerge through the material practices surrounding the treatment of the corpse and the deceased’s subsequent memorialization, particularly in the context of public health funerals.
Dr Rachel Smith is a Lecturer in Anthropology and Museum Studies at University of Aberdeen. Her background is in social and economic anthropology, and anthropology of religion, and she also has long-standing interests and experience in material and visual culture, and museums. Her core research has focused on local perspectives on development and social change in Vanuatu, an island nation in the Western Pacific.
Dr Zeynep Oguz is Lecturer in Anthropology of Development at the University of Edinburgh. She works on environmental and extractive politics, energy transitions, political geology, and populism & nationalism, and territorial politics in Turkey, Cyprus, and the United States. Before coming to Edinburgh, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne and a postdoctoral fellow in environmental humanities at Northwestern University. Her articles have been published in Cultural Anthropology, Journal for Cultural Economy, Political Geography, and Environmental Humanities. Zeynep’s current research investigates coal-to-solar energy transitions in Central Appalachia, particularly in relation to contested notions of energy justice and extractive histories. Her first monograph, Political Geologies of Oil in Turkey is currently under review by Duke University Press. She recently co-edited a Special Issue for Environmental Humanities, titled “Earth as Praxis: Geology, Power, and the Planetary” (November 2023).
THE VENUE: THE BURN HOUSE AND KEEPING OURSELVES SAFE
We will be staying at The Burn, an old estate in Aberdeenshire. Please take time to familiarise yourself with The Burn by looking at their website: https://theburn.co.uk/
The main house can accommodate 40+ guests. Downstairs there is a main living room with piano, comfortable sofas and an open fire, looking out onto the estate grounds. This is the main activity area for the away week. Off the main hallway are another two public rooms – a library stocked with board games and a drawing room – also used for group activities and breakaway sessions. There is a large dining room where all meals are taken, a freely available coffee machine, and accessible toilet facilities. There is also a small bar and terrace, open each evening (cash and card). Upstairs are spacious shared bedrooms (2-4 guests per room) and shared bathrooms (around 3 rooms per bathroom), and two small ‘flats’ for family residents. On the top floor is a games room (pool, snooker, table tennis, darts).
The grounds consist of a tennis court, croquet lawn, field for football/cricket, riverside walks, woods, stables (with resident donkeys), and numerous outbuildings – including a Courtyard House where staff will likely stay. The village of Edzell is a 30-minute walk or 5-minute car journey – the village has a small corner-shop, a pub, minor eateries, and a castle. Montrose is the nearest town (and railway station) and is 25 minutes by car. It is a good idea to pack your own snacks, since The Burn provide breakfast, lunch and dinner, with tea and biscuit breaktimes, but there is no shop on-site.
If the weather is nice, then nearly all activities and talks can be conducted outdoors, as has been the case in the past when sun and 20’c temperatures have been glorious. However, it has also been known to snow in late-April, which means there can be a biting wind and activities will likely be indoors. Both conditions have been known!
A few key things to note:
• Alcohol is on sale at The Burn. They do not allow guests to bring their own alcohol. Please respect this rule!
• The grounds of The Burn are great for walking or running, so feel free to bring your gear. There are also outdoor sports and indoor games.
• Mobile reception at The Burn is spotty, and while there is WiFi, it is not the fastest. So, please be prepared to be less connected than normal.
Entry requirements: 1st year PhD students in social anthropology, and MRES/Msc students in social anthropology intending to progress to PhD study. We do also consider applications from doing anthropology-focused, ethnographic projects in sociology at Glasgow [which has a small core of anthropologists on its academic staff and teaches some anthropology].