An Unfortunate Homecoming: On the Complications of Student Fieldwork Security in the Wake of the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

Ethnography, as a method, is growing in popularity and is widely adapted into numerous disciplines, including international relations, conflict studies as well as feminist, and social, geographic research. Considering the broader adaptation of the ethnographic method, and its significance in the development in the lives of young academics, this thesis will examine the case of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and its students conducting fieldwork in early 2020. While students of various (under)graduate degrees – such as conflict studies and cultural anthropology – were conducting fieldwork across the globe during March 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic was declared (WHO 2020). In this context, this thesis explores the experience of university students during their ethnographic fieldwork. Furthermore, it examines their considerations vis-à-vis the COVID-19 global outbreak and the subsequent university response from the University's administrative and departmental officers. This research is operationalised through comprehensive literature examination as well as qualitative approaches to interviewing the purposefully sampled participants. It will conclude that there is an evident absence in resonance and understanding between the actors involved with the student's fieldwork security as well as towards the lived experience of the student. As a consequence, the student experiences a multi-layered sense of deep solitude during the final stages of their education.