Ethnographic Vulnerabilities: A Reflexive Workshop on Embodied and Intersectional Approaches

November 20, 2026

Amanda Jousset, UNINE

Dr. Federica Moretti, UNIL

Noalie Osman, UNIFR

Dr. Paulina Trejo Mendez

This workshop addresses ethical issues from two different standpoints: on the one hand, we reflect, together with the participants, on the ways ethics is institutionally framed from the perspectives of processual and procedural ethics (Perrin at al., 2018). On the other hand, we will think collectively with and on participants' situated embodied experiences of risk and vulnerabilities, faced during the different phases of the research process. These will encompass financial, organizational and ethical preparation, empirical research, challenges encountered during research, as well as data protection issues raised during data analysis, writing and publication.

This workshop starts from the concerns, tensions and complex situations researchers are confronted with – such as differences in interactions during research linked to gender, race, class, and ability –, to then move to an institutional perspective to grasp the ethical debates surrounding social sciences in general and anthropology in particular. The workshop puts the ethnographers at the center of the reflection: what are the material, relational, and institutional possibilities and obstacles in the process of conducting ethnographic research? In so doing, it aims at reflecting on different ways of framing and experiencing vulnerabilities. These can go from trauma, cultural choc, cumulative stress, sexual harassment, physical harm, accidents, outbreak of conflicts, environmental catastrophes, to access to health institutions and doing fieldwork accompanied by the researcher's family. 

Lausanne (tbc)

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