CaféTheoria Workshop 8: The Field and the Fieldworker

We're delighted to announce the eighth and last CaféTheoria workshop: "The Field and the Fieldworker", where scholars reflect on their experiences of conducting long-term empirical research. Responding to the workshop theme of "the field" and "the fieldworker", the roundtable will feature discussions on the epistemological, empirical, conceptual and practical aspects of their work.

About Our Roundtable 

Professor Sarah Hodges (she/her), is a Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at KCL's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. She currently runs the £1.5m Wellcome-funded Collaborative Award, ‘What’s at stake in the fake? Indian pharmaceuticals, African markets, and global health’ alongside co-investigators from the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Amsterdam (2018-2024). Sarah uses ethnography and historical records to ask: what are the everyday lives of public health measures? To answer this question, she moves beyond medical anthropologists’ and historians’ conventional sites of inquiry: the clinic, the lab, the classroom, or the regulator’s office. Instead, Sarah’s field sites have included dumpsters behind hospitals, pharmaceutical distributors’ warehouse parking lots, radical newspaper archives, and hotel lobbies. In one way or another, all her research is empirically rooted in Tamil-speaking south India. Before joining King’s in 2022, Sarah held positions at the University of Warwick, Cambridge University, SOAS, and was a visiting professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University. She holds an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago and a BA from Brown University.

Jo Krishnakumar (they/avar) is a facilitator, anthropologist and writer based at SOAS, University of London. They research care, activism and collective-making in sex workers’, trans and queer communities in India. Jo co-runs two independent projects- Almaarii, a visual ethnography of queer space in south Asia and Trans/form, a pedagogical tool to understand anti-trans violence in India. Jo also works with Mithra Trust, Chennai where they facilitate mental health spaces for queer-trans people from an intersection of psychology, narrative therapy and anthropology.

Dr Cristian Montenegro (he/him) is a health sociologist with a background in professional and academic work on mental health policy. He is especially interested in how social movements and political ideologies shape mental health policy across time. He has conducted qualitative research on mental health and human rights, psychiatric deinstitutionalisation and reform, service-user engagement, and co-production in mental health research, with a focus on Latin America. He is a Senior Lecturer in Critical Global Health at KCL's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, after being a Senior Research Fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health (https://wcceh.org). He is also an adjunct researcher at the Millennium Institute for Research on Depression and Personality (Chile) and a visiting professor at the Mental Health Programme of the School of Public Health, Universidad de Chile.

Dr Nickolas Surawy Stepney (he/him) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the project ‘Grid oncology: remaking cancer care in India’ (led by Professor Carlo Caduff) at KCL's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. He completed his PhD in Anthropology at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine in September 2022. Using ethnographic methodologies, his research examines the material and symbolic circulations of morphine in northwest India.

What is CaféTheoria?

CaféTheoria is an interactive workshop series where renowned experts discuss core social science theories & you engage your peers & colleagues in lively discussion & debate. Attendees are not required to prepare in advance of the session, but curiosity and inquisitiveness are encouraged. 

When/Where?

This is an in-person event only. The event will be held in King's Building, K3.11 from 1530-1730, followed by a reception. Please do register given heightened security requirements on campus. Registration will close on 19th June 2024.

A map is available here, and accessibility arrangements are detailed here.