During the COVID-19 pandemic, three former PhD students at the Geography Department of the University of Sheffield, Ana Laura Zavala Guillen, Itzel San Roman Pineda, and Jenny Veenstra, founded the Network of Women Doing Fieldwork. What started as an online and informal safe space for mutual support against gender-based violence experienced during research became a women's activist movement across social and environmental sciences and arts based on five continents.
The Network of Women Doing Fieldwork (NWDF) envisions a world where women researchers can conduct fieldwork free from violence, with dignity and joy, and with the right support from their institutions and funders. With this vision, the NWDF collaborates with academic institutions and funding bodies to improve well-being and safety in the field from a gender-based approach.
For example, in 2021, the Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU) from the University College London partnered with the NWDF to produce a report to assess and improve mechanisms that prevent and mitigate the risk of gender-based violence against PhD researchers who are collecting data away from their home institutions. The report, Confronting Gender-Based Violence in Fieldwork: Potential Sites of Intervention within DPU’s PhD Programme, can be found here.
Furthermore, in 2023, the NWDF delivered a series of workshops, Feeling the Field, for the British Academy Early Career Researcher Network. These workshops delved into the connections between bodies and research to explore how researchers navigate the ubiquitous risk of violence in the field. The workshops used an artistic and geographical method known as cuerpo territorio, or body-mapping. This method, based on Latin-American feminist decolonial theory, enabled researchers working across disciplines in field sites worldwide to reflect on the emotions they experienced whilst collecting data.
The NWDF is currently designing workshops in decolonising the curricula for Kings College London and writing book chapters for manuals in fieldwork research and feminist geography.
See our section on the website of the University of Northumbria https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/academic-departments/geography-and-environmental-sciences/research/centre-for-global-development/network-of-women-doing-fieldwork/
Dr Ana Laura Zavala Guillen (she/her/ella): I am the co-founder of the Network of Women Doing Fieldwork and a member of the colectiva Feeling the Field. I am also a critical historical geographer working with Afro-descendant communities on territorial dispossession, the resistance of their social movements, and the Black epistemologies on which they are founded. From an anti-colonial perspective, in my methodology, I delve into oral histories, develop community-based maps, and facilitate the access and analysis of colonial records by racialised communities to support their agenda on reparations. Before gaining a PhD in Human Geography, I practised as a human rights lawyer in transitional justice and prosecution of mass crimes for eight years. I am a Lecturer at the Geography Department of Northumbria University and a British Academy Postdoctoral fellow.
Dr Micaela G. Signorelli is a Chilean-Italian performance maker, visual artist, and academic researcher based in London. She is part of the Network of Women doing Fieldwork. Signorelli is passionate about researching the manifold applications of theatrical techniques in education and psychology, interrogating and how art facilitates difficult, but important conversations.
Dr Pietra Cepero Rua Perez is a Brazilian human geographer and ethnographer who has conducted extensive research in the Brazilian Amazon since 2011. She is currently pursuing her PhD at Durham University's Department of Geography, with a focus on social contested large-scale mining project in the Amazon. As a member of the Network of Women Doing Fieldwork, she is committed to addressing 4 gender violence and advocating for a safe and supportive environment for researchers. Her work as an ethnographer focuses on developing strong links with local people and academics, delving into onto-epistemological concerns, encouraging knowledge co-production, and engaging in militant research. She also actively participates in social movements in the Brazilian Amazon.
Joyce Treasure (b. 1965 Birmingham, UK) lives in London. She graduated with a BA Hons, first class degree, in Black Studies from Birmingham City University in 2020. Her work explores ancestral memory, mythology, and ritual; examining how changing climates and colonial legacies exert on bodies, places, and well-being. Embracing a variety of mediums including collage, sculpture, painting, performance and speculative writing, she navigates the intersection of politics, care, and satire, transforming assemblages of objects and images into allegories of lived experiences. Drawing inspiration from found objects, she embraces a free-form approach, translating psychological landscapes into surreal material and immaterial features. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Tate, Liverpool and Selfridges, Birmingham. Acquisitions of work include Bruntwood, Birmingham and Winchester University, and in 2019 she was awarded an art residency with Grand Union. In addition to being an awardee of the Womxn of Colour Art Award, 2022, from 198 Contemporary Arts Gallery, she facilitates workshops working one-on-one and with groups and was the recipient of an Arts Council, research and development fund in 2022.
Dr Itzel San Roman Pineda is a Mexican critical geographer with over 18 years of research expertise in tourism for development (T4D). Her research focuses on grassroots movements led by Indigenous peoples and rural communities in the Global South, addressing social, economic, gender, ethnic, educational, and environmental inequalities. She holds a PhD from the University of Sheffield, and her doctoral work contributed to scholarship on sustainable development, and tourism political economy, by providing a novel grassroots perspective on T4D. She is FASTA Development Manager in the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) at the University of Leeds. Her work involves community engagement activities regarding the application of weather forecasting technologies to mitigate the impacts of climate change in Africa. Itzel’s commitment to addressing gender-based violence was reinforced by her experiences of harassment during fieldwork, leading her to co-found the Network of Women Doing Fieldwork. This initiative highlights her dedication to eradicating genderbased violence and advocating for safe, free, and respectful academic environments for women and those who identify as women in academia.
Dr Vevila Dornelles is a Brazilian geographer with a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Reading. Her scholarly research addresses the dynamics of social exclusion, inclusion, and agency, 5 with special focus on gendered relations, and their role in the production of digital spaces and spaces of the digital. She has over 10 years of diverse professional experience in consulting, private, academic, and third sectors. Proficient in employing qualitative research methods from a critical standpoint, Vevila joined the Network of Women Doing Fieldwork as part of her commitment towards a fairer academic culture for women and other gender and sexuality minorities, especially those working on online research. Vevila is currently a Researcher at doebem Doações Efetivas, a thirdsector metaorganisation acting towards effective social transformation in Brazil.
Dr Ariana Markowitz (she/her) is a social urbanist and feminist researcher specialising in urban violence, the development of participatory and especially arts-based methodologies, and research ethics. Now at the London Borough of Lambeth, she has nearly two decades of cross-sector experience working to better understand and prevent violence and precarity in 15 countries across North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. She holds a PhD in development planning and an MSc in urban design both from UCL, and a BA in Political Science and Middle East Studies from McGill University. Ariana has helped guide the Network of Women Doing Fieldwork since 2020.
Zubaida Umar Baba (PhD) is a multidisciplinary researcher specialising in Political Science, Sociology, Development studies and Environment, with a specific focus on migration and displacement. Her research centres on understanding the challenges faced by internally displaced people in Northern Nigeria, exploring the social, political and environmental factors contributing to displacement and seeking sustainable solutions. Currently affiliated with the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, Zubaida’s expertise lies in illuminating the complex intersections of migration, displacement and development. She is a research affiliate of the Refugee Law Initiative in London and a member of Professionals In Humanitarian Assistance and Protection. Zubaida is also an active member of the Feeling the Field Network in the UK, where she collaborates with fellow female researchers to share fieldwork experiences through workshops, conferences, and articles. In addition to her academic pursuits, Zubaida serves as a cultural Diversity Worker at the New Wortley Community Centre in Leeds, where she works closely with refugee women, fostering community engagement and empowerment.