Emotions and Ethical Dilemmas in Anthropological Research

April 17, 2026

Dr. Faduma Abukar Mursal, UNILU

Dr. Pascale Schild, UNIBE

Omar Kasmani, Freie Universität Berlin

This workshop aims to explore the role of emotions when experiencing and navigating

ethical dilemmas in anthropological research. Throughout the stages of a research project, from ethnographic fieldwork to the creation and dissemination of anthropological knowledge, researchers face conflicting professional and personal responsibilities and emotions that involve considering 'how one ought to live' (Laidlaw 2023, 1). In this workshop, we seek to bring together debates on 'ethics' and 'emotions' in anthropology, extending on feminist critiques of the dichotomy between the emotional and the rational/professional, including Ruth Behar's The Vulnerable Observer (1996), that point to the importance of emotions in 'driving' researchers and informing their perspectives. Emotions are entangled with ethics in that they reveal 'what matters' to people (Lutz, 2017) and their ethical striving in responding to the world around them (Kuan 2023). Drawing on contemporary queer and feminist work (see Kasmani 2022), we will discuss how emotions reveal and respond to situations in which conflicting matters are at stake for researchers in relation to their professional and personal lives. Methodologically, we approach emotions as a means of understanding and navigating ethical dilemmas in fieldwork and academia (see Davies and Spencer 2010). We ask: What can we learn about ethics and its dilemmas in anthropology by listening to the emotions of researchers and those around them? How do emotions contribute to ethical dilemmas, and vice versa?

This one-day workshop offers young researchers in anthropology and related disciplines an opportunity to share their experiences and reflect on the emotions and concerns that arise when encountering ethical dilemmas in research. We encourage participants to share their projects, and how ethical dilemmas and their emotional entanglements figure in them, including (but not limited to) dilemmas involving:

- tensions between obligations to protect research participants and the principles of

open science and how these tensions were solved.

- anxieties relating to experiences of academic precarity, such as having a work

contract terminated before completing a PhD.

- the blurring of personal and professional boundaries, such as falling in love in the

field, feeling powerless in the face of research participants' living conditions, or

encountering violence in fieldwork and academia.

In addition to the participants' inputs and discussions, the workshop will feature a keynote lecture delivered by our guest speaker, who will also provide comments and suggestions on the individual inputs.

Suggested readings

Behar, Ruth. 1996. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart.

Boston: Beacon Press.

Davies James and Dimitrina Spencer (eds). 2010. Emotions in the Field. The Psychology

and Anthropology of Fieldwork Experience. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Decleve, Livnat Konopny. 2023. 'This is What My Fear Told Me': Fear as Key to

Understanding Political Action. Israel Studies 28 (1): 106-121.

Kuan, Teresa: Emotion and Affect. In The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics, edited by James Laidlaw. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 309-334.

Laidlaw, James (ed.). 2023. The Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Ethics.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lutz, Catherine. 2017. "What Matters." Cultural Anthropology 32(2): 181-191.

doi.org/10.14506/ca32.2.02.

von Vacano, Mechthild. 2019. "Reciprocity in Research Relationships: Introduction." In

Affective Dimensions of Fieldwork and Ethnography, edited by Thomas Stodulka,

Samia Dinkelaker and Ferdiansyah Thajib. Springer Verlag, 79–86.

Omar Kasmani. 2022. Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan. Durham: Duke University Press.

Invited experts (tbc)

Omar Kasmani, Freie Universität Berlin

Osmar Kasmani is a cultural anthropologist and visiting professor at Freie Universität Berlin. His work combines the study of Islamic life-worlds with queer and affect theory, exploring critical notions of public intimacy and post-migrant be/longing. He is the author of Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan (Duke University Press, 2022), which won the 2023 Ruth Benedict Prize and the 2024 Bloomsbury Pakistan Prize, and is the editor of Pakistan Desires: Queer Futures Elsewhere (Duke University Press, 2023).

University of Berne

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