Field research courses
Field Research Courses Summer 2022
Deadline to apply: January 11 2022 BEFORE 4 p.m.
Field Research courses will be offered in country in summer 2022. They will not be available online or at a distance. Field Research Courses will be held according to the host country's sanitary measures and Canadian Travel Advisories.
We offer courses that enable students to conduct an independent study abroad and offer them the opportunity to increase their knowledge on particular issues linked to the host country. These courses represent six credits in the undergraduate program of study and three credits for students registered in a masters program.
For more information or to find out how the course can fit in your program of study, students can make an appointment with the Field Research Course Coordinator. Write to fssinter@uOttawa.ca to ask for an appointment. Indicate your student number and availability so that we can schedule a meeting via TEAMS or in person.
Please note that each course has a maximum capacity of 15 students.
Click on the tabs below to find out more about the field courses and the course outline.
Brazil
Local Leadership ans Social Change in Brazil (course offered in English)
This three-week field research course brings students to Brazil’s Cacao Coast to work with rural community associations on documenting their history, activities, and networks. Local leadership (lideranças) have successfully founded grassroots associations supporting concerns such as agroecology, sustainable traditional labour (e.g. fishing), health (particularly maternal health), questions of race and gender, and migration and community tourism. Students will work in teams of four with an association and a subject matter expert / translator to put anthropological research techniques into practice. Mornings will be spent doing participant observation and interviews on site, with afternoons for fieldnotes, classroom discussion, and analysis. During the last week, the teams will produce an audio-visual or written archive of findings for the associations’ future use. These will be shared at a final community networking event for all participants.
This course is offered in English to undergraduate students from May 14 to June 4 , 2022.
Professor Contact Information
Course Outline
Cameroon
Antrhopologie des médecines (Course offered in French only)
The course offers an introduction to medical anthropology through Cameroonian healing practices. Upon joining our hosts on the sites of the Association of Research in Anthropology of African Medicine (ARAM) in Etoa in the periphery of Yaoundé and at the Antenna Lamal Pouguè in the forest of Bassinglègè and the Antenna Kribi on the coast, it will be possible to follow the process of healing from the collection of plants to their transformation into medicine, as well as to grasp how the practices of ARAM weave themselves into contexts, histories, presents and foreseeable futures. We will also participate to sound and rhythmic therapies and to develop fieldwork practices in anthropology. A historian of Peul medicine will also accompany us on the sites of his fieldwork in Ngaounderé in Northern Cameroon to meet with other healers and multiply perspectives.
This course is offered in French, for undergraduate students, from August 2 to 22, 2022.
Professor Contact Information
School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies
Course Outline
- 2022 (PDF) in French only
- 2021 (PDF) in French only
- 2020 (PDF)
Germany
Germany 30 years after reunification: Revisit the Past, Experience the Present, Imagine the Future (course offered in English to masters and 4th year students only)
This three-week intensive field research course aims at discovering and living Germany’s vivid recent history from 1945 to today. We will try to decode and understand the processes that led to the division of Germany in the late 1940s, as well as the dynamics that allowed the country to become reunited 40 years later. We will also extensively discuss the cultural, economic and social life before and after reunification, as well as the challenges citizens of East and West Germany faced after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The course will be taught in a very practical way: we will visit and explore the innumerable traces of history that remain alive and well in East Germany’s landscape. To help students connect with the different themes that we will cover in the seminar, there will be several practical exercises that will make it easier to immerse ourselves in Germany’s past and present.
This course is offered in English to masters students. Some 4th year undergrad students will be accepted. The course will take place from June 24 to July 9, 2022.
Professor Contact Information
Professor Daniel Stockemer
School of Political Studies, room FSS7076
Daniel.Stockemer@uOttawa.ca, tel. 613-562-5800 ext. 2696
Office hours: by appointment
Course Outline
Taiwan (Taipei)
Tackling a global scourge: Some lessons from Taiwan (Course offered in English)
This course explores how Taiwan has successfully tackled a global pandemic while maintaining people’s civil rights, progressing toward transitional justice, and maintaining social stability despite threats from the outside. Canadian leaders of tomorrow can learn a lot from that experience: public trust in the authorities, universal access to health care without compromising public finances, robust immunization against disinformation while maintaining freedom of opinion. Some challenges remain acute: population ageing and managing labor migration in a threatening international environment. The classes include lectures by experts, meetings with civil society actors, and excursions in the capital’s historical memorials and important cultural sites. Students will gain understanding of the stakes related to ensuring protection of public health in a society where opinions vary widely but concerns over national self-determination are largely shared.
The classes include lectures by experts, meetings with civil society actors involved in the promotion of care workers’ civil rights, and excursions in the capital’s historical memorials, its health care institutions, and its important cultural sites. Students will gain understanding of the stakes related to labour relations and immigration in a society where traditional gender relations change, and concerns over the upholding of national identity remain acute.
This course is offered in English to undergraduate students from April 30 to May 20, 2022.
Professor Contact Information
André Laliberté
School of Political Studies
Andre.Laliberte@uottawa.ca,
Online Office Hours: by appointment
Course Outline
France
Vivre ensemble: innovation social, participation citoyenne et justice épistémique (course offered in French)
This course proposes to reflect on living together (Aifris, 2019) today in our societies characterized by their multiple forms of diversity. We will do so by approaching actors of social intervention, particularly their unifying initiatives, whether they come from state institutions, community organizations, communities themselves or creative individuals. We will use three conceptual approaches: social innovation (Klein & Harrison, 2007); citizen participation (Fortin-Debart & Girault, 2009); and epistemic justice (Godrie, 2020).
The goal is to provide students with an opportunity to move into environments other than the one(s) in which they grew up and were educated. The course is based on collaboration, creativity, participation, and reciprocity. We will meet with researchers, practitioners-researchers, social and cultural workers, and citizens in two municipalities-Gennevilliers in the suburbs of Paris and Rennes in Brittany. Students will be exposed to training, research and/or intervention projects that work with people who live the realities and phenomena under study; that mobilize actors from different sectors to reflect and act on a transformative, emancipatory, and just living together.
This geographical and cultural displacement opens new learning on two horizons: learning with a distance from what is "normal" and what is taken for granted in our understanding of the social world and of living together; and learning in proximity (with) environments confronted with the same issues in other contexts. It is in the exchange and discussion of different (and innovative) ways of doing research, intervening, and acting that students will conduct their own research project.
During the introductory sessions (dates to be determined), students will prepare a research problem (related to an aspect of living together through the lens of social innovation, citizen participation or epistemic justice), a research question and methodology. To make reciprocity a reality, we will also identify Canadian organizations and initiatives to present them to our partners in France.
The four weeks of meetings and exchanges with training and intervention environments in Gennevilliers and Rennes (data collection) will lead the students to revise their initial questioning to co-construct a research project that includes the perspective of the actors (stakeholders and people affected by the problem studied). This research process will take place in groups and will be accompanied by the professor throughout the course, as well as by researchers and research practitioners during mentoring sessions in Gennevilliers and Rennes. The research and travel experience will be supported by regular debriefing sessions, sharing questions, discoveries, concerns, and learnings.
This course is offered in French, to undergraduate students, from April 29 to May 22 2022 (DATES TO BE DOWNSIZED TO 3 WEEKS, INFORMATION TO COME SOON)
Professor Contact Information
Professor Marguerite Soulière
School of Social Work
Marguerite.Souliere@uOttawa.ca
Course Outline
- 2022 (PDF) (sketch) in French only
- 2021 (PDF) in French only, École d'Askoria website link