Ethnography Collective

The Ethnography Collective at UMass supports ethnography in all of its many manifestations.

Grounded in the arts and sciences of deep, immersive research, the Ethnography Collective is a community that takes seriously the critical importance of embodied, lived, and relational knowledge production. We aim to sustain ethnographers in their work and to increase advocacy, education, and visibility for ethnographic research.

The Ethnography Collective organizes events and promotes spaces in which we can learn from each other, discuss directions for research, and grapple with old and new challenges. We embrace creative and meaningful dialogue across disciplines, engage in mutual mentoring, and value the involvement of our graduate student colleagues. Serving as a resource for all things ethnography, we collaborate with like-minded individuals and institutions within and beyond the University.

The origins of our Collective trace to the COVID-19 health crisis in 2020. We felt lost and at a loss during the pandemic as rapid social changes and social distancing norms disrupted our communities; prevented access to field sites; and left us hungry for connection, support, and a renewed articulation of the intellectual and political value of immersive research.

Grassroots and faculty driven, the Collective draws active participants from four Colleges and Schools: Education, Humanities and Fine Arts, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Public Health and Health Sciences. We are based in the following departments: Anthropology; Communication; Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies; Political Science; Public Policy; Sociology; Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies; and Community Health Education.

Recent News/Events

  • Inaugural Fieldwork Fellowships—We’re thrilled to offer our congratulations to Lara Sabra and Omogbolahan Bello, the two recipients of the Ethnography Collective’s inaugural fieldwork fellowship, as well as extend an honorable mention to Marybelle Issa. This award will support students’ ethnographic fieldwork in Summer 2025 and provide critical funding to advance their dissertation research at various stages. 

    This fellowship was made possible by the new Ethnography Collective Fund, created in 2024 to promote the professional development of graduate students pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Ethnographic Research. Through this fund, we aim to invest in the next generation of ethnographers and their innovative, field-based research.  

    Please join us join us in celebrating these students and their important work! 

    Lara Sabra

    Lara Sabra is an anthropology Ph.D. student and a Graduate Assistant at the Jail Education Initiative. As a university student in Beirut, Lebanon, she was actively involved in state-opposition groups, an experience that deeply influenced her academic goals. She aspires to work collaboratively with her interlocutors to imagine and create alternative worlds and futures.

    "Building Futures Beyond Carceral Warscapes: A Creative Ethnography with Lebanon's Formerly Incarcerated Women" is Lara's dissertation fieldwork project. Drawing on life history interviews, collaborative storytelling, and other creative ethnographic methods, the project examines how diverse trajectories and ongoing histories of war are instilled in modes of incarceration in Lebanon, while also excavating relational survival strategies amidst carceral landscapes of war.

    Omogbolahan Bello

    Omogbolahan Bello, a Ph.D. student in Political Science, is from Ibadan, a city in western Nigeria, most notable for its cultural feel, the way it seems like its history is right there with you in the present. The city influenced his early interest in literature (especially poetry), sports, music, and the human experience.

    His fieldwork project titled “As If Random: The Intellectual and Political Life of Field Experiments in Africa” questions the implications of knowledge produced by Western institutions in non-western climates. His work is the result of an ethnography in an unusual locus of study – an experimental research team in its fluid state, planning, implementing, and adapting to situational challenges arising from a project that involves multiple field sites across space and time. It will focus on the enterprise of producing social science research and the ways in which researchers inhabit the worlds of the methods to which they lend themselves.

    Marybelle Issa

     Marybelle Issa is a Lebanese-Canadian Ph.D. student in Linguistic Anthropology specializing in semiotic landscapes and resistance movements. Her work focuses on artistic interventions in colonial contexts and explores the interconnections between materiality and critical consciousness.

    In the Summer of 2025, Marybelle will conduct multi-sited pre-dissertation ethnographic fieldwork in Montreal, Beirut, and Amman. Exploring contemporary Palestinian art across major cities in the diaspora, she will spend two months creating preliminary connections and attending art exhibitions, poetry readings, and academic events to witness the creative processes, investigate the institutional side of the art world, and gain insight on the artistic landscapes in the current political climate.

     

  • Ethnography & Activism—hosted on April 19, 2022, by Fareen Parvez and Millie Thayer—featured panelists Javier Auyero, Heba Gowayed, Maple Razsa, and Frances Roberts-Gregory. Topics ranged from refugee crises and toxic landscapes to state complicity in the production of urban violence. Watch a video of the event here.

 

  • Fieldnotes: Reflections on Russia's Invasion of Ukraine—hosted by the Ethnography Collective on April 12, 2022—was a roundtable that centered the voices and experiences of ethnographers of Ukraine. Panelists provided insights on the current war and reflected on the types of ethnographic interventions that are possible in this context. Watch a video of the event below.