Workshop
Workshop: Sharing field notes
- Date
- Monday 26 May 2025
- Time
- Explanation
- The workshop takes place from 13:15-17:00h in the Digital Lab, with a lunch elsewhere in the Huizinga building beforehand from 12:15h onwards. The workshop will be in English.
- Address
- Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
Leiden - Room
- Digital Lab 0.09
In this workshop we will dive into these reasons and the pros and cons of sharing fieldwork data, and how to share them. Through case studies from various disciplines within the social sciences and humanities and input from trainers and participants we aim to establish best practices.
- Audience: Researchers in any field within the social sciences and humanities, research support staff
- Language: English
- Level: No prior knowledge is necessary. An understanding of fieldwork research processes is beneficial.
- Location: Hosted in the Digital Lab by the LUCDH, an interdisciplinary centre for computational approaches to Digital Humanities that brings together students and faculty from across the Leiden community. Please note that the lunch will take place not in the Digital Lab but in the Huizinga garden (weather allowing) or social area.
About the workshop
Field notes are the ‘raw data’ and/or essential contextualisation of data of several types of qualitative research in social sciences and humanities disciplines like archaeology, sociology, and cultural anthropology. They can vary from handwritten, completely unstructured text in a notebook, to manually or digitally filled out forms. What they have in common is that they form the context to interpret the original data (and in some cases they are the original data themselves). As such they are essential for research integrity and the verification of results. However, they are not often shared for various reasons.
In this workshop we will dive into these reasons and the pros and cons of sharing fieldwork data, and how to share them. Through case studies from various disciplines within the social sciences and humanities and input from trainers and participants we aim to establish best practices. We will cover the following topics: Why share (or not share) field notes, which notes could be shared (and which not), how to share them (e.g., in what format, on which platform), what metadata are needed for them to be understood.
Programme outline
- 12:15-13:15 Walk in, lunch available (Huizinga building garden or social area)
- 13:15-13:45 Welcome, introduction to the topic (Digital Lab)
- 13:45-14:45 Case studies: brief presentations by researchers from different disciplines in the social sciences and humanities
- 14:45-15:15 Break
- 15:15-16:15 Interactive sessions
- 16:15-16:45 Conclusions
- 16:45-17:00 Wrap-up
Confirmed speakers
- Anna Roodhof (sociology)
- Janneke Verheijen (cultural anthropology)
- Martine Bruil (linguistics)
- Pascal Flohr (archaeology)
Organisers
Pascal Flohr (Leiden University), Deborah Thorpe (DANS), Michelle van den Berk (DANS), Mayukha Bathini (Promovendi Netwerk Nederland), Bora Lushaj (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University).
Registration
Attendance at this workshop is free, though registration is required. Places are limited to 25 people so please register as early as possible. To register, please fill out the short registration form. Once you have registered we will be in touch again with practical information in advance of the workshop.
If, having registered for the event, you cannot attend, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can reallocate your place.
Funding
This workshop is part of the project 'Beyond personal data: a new initiative to support early career-researchers with hard-to-share data', which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) via the Thematic Digital Competence Centre Social Science & Humanities (TDCC-SSH).