Call for Papers - Fieldwork in geography and geographies of fieldwork
Nordia Geographical Publications Theme Issue – Call for papers
Fieldwork in geography and geographies of fieldwork
Marika Kettunen, Marianna Leoni, Aleksi Räsänen & Henriikka Salminen (eds.)
We are pleased to announce a call for papers for Nordia Geographical Publications’ Theme
Issue on "Fieldwork in geography and geographies of fieldwork". The Nordia Geographical
Publications is a peer-reviewed, non-profit, open access academic journal focusing on
contemporary interventions in geography. The journal is published by the Geographical
Society of Northern Finland and the Geography Research Unit at the University of Oulu.
Geography and geographers have a long history of conducting fieldwork. It has even been
suggested that the roots of geography as a discipline are “in the field rather than in the
library” (Sharp & Dowler, 2011, p. 147). Fieldwork is also something that connects
geographers and geographically oriented scholarship across (sub)disciplines. Respectively,
fieldwork in the form of field trips and courses is often considered a central mode of teaching
geography. Today, significant amount of fieldwork is also conducted by geography students
as a part of course work or theses, which often make it into research articles.
In geographical research, fieldwork is often taken up as a means to collect research material.
It thus includes the act of going to the field site(s). Depending on the topic of the study,
fieldwork can entail a range of practices and methodological approaches from mapping
vegetation to the usage of modern technological tools such as drones and, when doing
research with people, qualitative methods such as participatory observation and interviews.
Besides going to the field to collect research material, geographers have also contributed to
discussions concerning practices, ethics and politics of fieldwork. Geographers have
brought to the fore the colonialist and gendered histories of fieldwork and expeditions that
entwine with the development of geography as a discipline (see, Katz, 1996; Dowler & Sharp, 2011). Attending to spaces, practices and power-relations of fieldwork, geographers have
also contributed to problematizing the field as a site separate from the research and the
researcher (e.g. Hyndman, 2001; Sharp & Dowler, 2011). Fieldwork has also been
considered from the perspective of experiences, embodiment and emotion as they relate to
conducting (e.g. Caretta & Jokinen, 2016; Couper, 2024) and teaching (e.g. Burlingame,
2021) fieldwork.
Focus has also been paid on possibilities of doing and teaching fieldwork online, further
propelled by the COVID19-pandemic and lockdowns (e.g. Heintzman et al., 2023;
Kainulainen et al., 2022) and urgent needs to promote more sustainable fieldwork practices
(Telford et al., 2023). Digitalisation has provided tools for conducting fieldwork in
digital/virtual environments with advantages concerning accessibility and budget, for
example. Social media in particular represents an interesting space for both quantitative and
qualitative research. Moreover, possibilities and challenges provided by digital spaces and
realities contribute to further problematizing the spatial and material dimensions of
fieldwork.
This theme issue aims to bring together diverse perspectives and research concerning
fieldwork. Entitling the call as “Fieldwork in geography and geographies of fieldwork”, we
seek to accommodate contributions in which fieldwork is taken up as a means of conducting
research and producing research material, including recent technological and
methodological developments as they relate to fieldwork. We also welcome contributions
concerning theoretical and conceptual debates as they relate to thinking, doing and
teaching fieldwork. Contributions can be in the form of research articles, academic essays
and reviews, and other discussion and intervention pieces speaking to the topic of the
theme. The theme issue warmly welcomes contributions from scholars working in and
between different subdisciplines of geography, as well as multidisciplinary scholarship
combining different disciplines or research traditions.
Contributions may focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- The collection and analysis of field data, with a special highlight in the data collected
by students
- Engaging with the field in geography education and teaching
- Embodied, experiential and emotional approaches to fieldwork
- Problematizing the field and fieldwork in geography
- Digital spaces of fieldwork
The contributions can take the form of:
- Peer reviewed research articles (ca. 5000–7000 words), academic essays or review
articles (ca. 3000–6000 words).
- Editorially reviewed interventions and discussions or debates that seek to clarify and
outline relevant issues related to the theme (ca. 2000–4000 words).
Please note the following when submitting your manuscript:
- Submit your preliminary title and abstract of maximum 500 words through the
nordia.journal.fi system by 30th of April.
- After the title and abstract deadline, you will be notified whether your paper has been
accepted to theme issue.
- Submit your final manuscript through the https://nordia.journal.fi/login by 30th of
September.
- Writing language is English and the author is responsible for proof-reading the
manuscript.
- Manuscripts should follow the guidelines provided by Nordia Geographical
Publications, available on the journal's website https://nordia.journal.fi/authors.
- The journal follows the peer review standards set by the Federation of Finnish
Learned Societies (TSV) and submitted papers will undergo a rigorous peer-review
process to ensure the highest academic standards and quality of the publication.
- Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted
and copyedited).
- Papers are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No
Derivatives 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0) license which ensures that authors
retain full copyright to their work.
- The journal is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Scopus.
In case of problems and questions do not hesitate to contact the editors marika.kettunen@oulu.fi,
marianna.leoni@oulu.fi, aleksi.rasanen@oulu.fi and henriikka.salminen@oulu.fi
References
Burlingame, K. (2021). Learning by feeling: Excursions into the affective landscape. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 47(5), 706–718. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2021.1977917
Caretta, M. A., & Jokinen, J. C. (2016). Conflating privilege and vulnerability: A reflexive analysis of
emotions and positionality in postgraduate fieldwork. The Professional Geographer, 69(2), 275–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2016.1252268
Couper, P. (2024). Feeling rules and emotion work in geomorphology fieldwork. Environment and Planning F, 3(3), 162–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/26349825241264394
Heintzman, R., Brandi, A., Kelley, M., & Marvin, M. C. (2023). A physical geography lab’s online transition: Student and instructor insights using iGEO video games during the pandemic. Journal of Geography, 122(3), 57–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221341.2023.2216705
Kainulainen, H., Lammi, P., Kemppainen, T., Luukkonen, J., Mod, H., Paarlahti, A., Rissanen, T., & Ruth, O. (2022). Maantieteen kenttäkurssin järjestäminen etäopetuksena koronapandemian
aikana. Terra, 134(1), 40–46. https://terra.journal.fi/article/view/115138
Katz, C. (1996). The expeditions of conjurers: Ethnography, power, and pretense. In D. Wolf (Ed.),
Feminist dilemmas in fieldwork (pp. 170–184). Westview Press.
Sharp, J., & Dowler, L. (2011). Framing the field. In V. J. Del Casino Jr., M. E. Thomas, P. Cloke, & R.
Panelli (Eds.), A companion to social geography (pp. 146–160). Wiley-Blackwell.
Telford, A., Valentine, A., & Godby, S. (2023). The paradox of the ‘sustainable fieldtrip’? Exploring the
links between geography fieldtrips and environmental sustainability. Journal of Geography in
Higher Education, 48(1), 115–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2023.2190961
