Return from the Field

Dear aspiring anthropologists,

We are happy to invite you to participate in the annual Return from the Field Symposium. As anthropology graduate students, you are warmly welcome to come share your fieldwork experiences, at whatever stage you may find yourself. The Symposium will take place on Friday, September 27th, from 10:00 am to 16:00 pm, in FSS 4006. A light lunch will be provided.

Participants will be allowed 25 minutes total, divided in two sections: (1) a presentation and (2) a bilingual Q&A. We recommend breaking down the timeframe into a 10-minute presentation of preliminary reflections on your work, followed by a 15-minute question period. You may choose to take longer to present. However, this will shorten the question period. Keep in mind that one of the goals of the Symposium is to learn how to give a conference talk. At conferences, when one is on a panel with other scholars, keeping to one's time limit shows respect for the audience and other panelists.

You may choose to present in English or French. You are welcome to write a talk and read it to the audience (reading aloud can be engaging when done well). Alternatively, you can speak from prepared notes (always more engaging than reading). Preparing slides (Power Point, Google Slides, Canva) is recommended.

If you are still out in the field and cannot physically attend, you have the option to present online. A Zoom link will be circulated to those who wish to attend presentations virtually as well.

The Symposium is a great opportunity to receive feedback from your peers and professors and bounce ideas off one another. The process of building up your presentation will likewise help you sort through and analyse data. Ultimately, the goal is to help move forward your thinking collaboratively—not to evaluate you.

If that is not enough to convince you, consider this: new this year, a “happy hour” will close the day. This will allow you to informally continue conversations, meet fellow students, network with faculty, or simply break the isolation of write-up.

To leap on this opportunity to workshop your ideas and hone your thinking at the Symposium, please email BOTH coordinators: Nina Tamara Barbosa Ponce (nbarb020@uottawa.ca) and Severine Gendron Martel (sgend099@uottawa.ca). Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

The deadline to sign up to present is September 12, 2024, at midnight.