Ethnographic Methods
Lecturer: Daniel Conway
Modality: In presence
Week 1: 10-14 August 2026
Workshop Contents and Objectives
Ethnographic methods seek to understand human life and relations in the contexts in which they are lived and experienced. Ethnographers seek to go beyond basing research findings on what people say they do, to seeing and experiencing what they do in order to deepen and provide nuance to understandings of society, politics, human behaviour and social change. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the technical, practical and philosophical issues that arise when employing both traditional and innovative approaches.
Ethnographers immerse themselves in a setting for a period of time, participating, listening, asking questions, observing and supplement observation with the analysis of interview data, documents, visual, sensory, digital, and creative data. Ethnographic methods have proven to provide valid, valuable and rich contextual data with which to understand complex social issues and address policy concerns. The course addresses both practical and theoretical issues through: the history of ethnography and contemporary applications; plan and design of a project; accessing the field; writing fieldnotes; making sense of observational data and telling credible stories; multi-sited, virtual, visual and sensory ethnography; short-term and applied ethnography; reflexivity and the emotions in fieldwork. The course will also discuss recent debates and controversies in ethnographic methods research including ethics and power relations when conducting research. The course is practical, encouraging participants to relate topics to their own research interests and to carry out and begin to analyse micro-observational studies.
Key topics covered include:
- Origins and history of ethnographic methods
- Philosophical and theoretical perspectives and debates in ethnography: positivism, post-modernism, grounded theory, feminist, queer and post/de-colonial ethnography
- Ethics, consent, safety and ethnography
- Participating and observing
- Interview methods: access, rapport and techniques
- Positionality and identity: reflexivity, auto-ethnography, being an insider and/or outsider
- Writing and using fieldnotes
- Doing visual and photographic ethnographies
- Online/virtual/digital ethnographies
- Walking methodologies and mapping
- Analysing ethnographic data: inductive and deductive interview data coding, analysing photographs, film and online sources.
- Controversies and debates: managing unequal power dynamics in ethnography, ‘over-rapport’/losing ‘perspective’, ethnography with marginalised or ‘vulnerable’ groups, ethnography with privileged/powerful groups and institutions
Indicative practical content will include writing interview guides, research interview practice, participant observation exercises, designing consent forms, writing fieldnotes, using film and the web for ethnographic research exercises, coding and analysis of data. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss, refine and get feedback on their own ethnographic research plans and projects.
Course objectives
By the end of the course, participants should:
- Be able to make close, theory-oriented observations through participation, observation, and conversation.
- Be equipped to record and analyze the data produced through diverse methods. Take a critical and creative approach to ethnographic methods and understand how they can be combined with other methods of data collection for a range of social, political and policy research areas.
- Be in a position to present, and defend the quality and value of ethnographic interpretations.
Detailed lecture plan (daily schedule)
| Day 1 |
Introduction
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| Day 3 |
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| Day 4 |
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| Day 5 |
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Prerequisites and course level
The course is introductory but intensive, rapidly taking participants from a beginner to an advanced level. Some prior familiarity with qualitative methods and background knowledge of the philosophy of social science is required. Participants should be aware that the practical decisions to be made when conducting ethnographic research are necessarily theoretically informed and will vary with each practitioner's orientation. The course aims to equip participants with the knowledge required to make those decisions for themselves in practice.
Recommended readings or preliminary material
- O'Reilly, K. 2009. Key Concepts in Ethnography, London: Sage
- O'Reilly, K. 2012. Ethnographic Methods, 2nd. Ed. London: Routledge
- Fetterman, D. (2009). Ethnography: Step by Step, Sage
- Boellstorff, T. et. Al. 2012. Ethnography and Virtual Worlds. Princeton University Press.
- Conway, D. (2025) The Queer Politics of Pride: Global LGBTQ+ Activism and Homocapitalism (London: Bloomsbury Academic), esp. Chapter 1.
- Conway, D. (2008) ‘Masculinities and narrating the past: experiences of researching white men who refused to serve in the apartheid army’, Qualitative Research, 8(3): 347-354.
- Nelson, R. (2025) Queer and Feminist Research: A Guide to Qualitative Methodologies (London: SAGE).
- Pink, S. (2009) Doing Sensory Ethnography, London: Sage
What our participants appreciated most
"Daniel Conway was a very knowledgable instructor who really took the time to answer all questions posed, and facilitated a lively discussion around very difficult questions about ethnographic research. | really appreciated his class (as well as his research!)"
"Just invaluable, will change how I do my PhD."
Daniel Conway
School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Humanities, University of Westminster, London, UK
Daniel Conway is Reader in Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster and a Research Associate at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His research is situated at the intersections of Feminist International Relations, political sociology and queer theory and with an expertise in qualitative methods and ethnography. He has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork at Pride events in South Africa, East and South Asia and North America that contributed to his book The Queer Politics of Pride: Global LGBTQ+ Activism and Homocapitalism (2025, Bloomsbury Academic). He has published widely on the anti-apartheid and peace activism by white South Africans in the 1980s including Masculinities, Militarisation and the End Conscription Campaign: War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa (Manchester and Johannesburg: Manchester University Press and Wits University Press, 2012), and has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on the lives and identities of British immigrants in South Africa published as Migration, Space and Transnational Identities: The British in South Africa (with Pauline Leonard, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), His work has been published in the journals Sociology, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Qualitative Research, Men and Masculinities, Citizenship Studies, Sexualities, International Affairs and the Journal of Southern African Studies. Conway’s research has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy. He is a former chair of the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Section of the International Studies Association.
Daniel Conway was awarded a PhD in Politics by Rhodes University, South Africa, an MSc with Commendation in International Relations by the University of Bristol and a BA (Hons) in History and Politics by the University of Exeter.