Fieldwork can be hugely rewarding, fun and enjoyable. It can be easy, but it can also turn out to be tough and challenging, both physically and mentally. There are some pitfalls that everyone should know about, but a lot of people learn by trial and error. Here are some tips to help you avoid at least a few mistakes.

List of posts in the series

Bonus post:

  • Emotional Labour & Self-Care

A little bit of background

Current fieldwork

For the record, my PhD fieldwork is one of the safest fieldwork I have ever done and come across, we are based very close to the city centre and the university too, so access to resources is easy and support is on hand if needed. Our field site is very civilised, located in the Australian National Botanic Gardens - there are proper paths, toilets, water fountains and even a café. I can be back at the University in ~10 mins if I need to and back at the house within ~30 mins.

Past experiences

However, I have done other fieldwork before my PhD, both during my undergraduate years as well as before university. I have therefore experienced a relatively wide range of fieldwork conditions, although admittedly I have avoided extreme cold and I said “no” to particularly dangerous field sites (for instance, I didn’t fancy working in places where poachers might put a gun or a machete to your head!).

What are those posts based on?

The tips included here are therefore a mix based on my experiences and stories of friends. In addition to my past experience and current fieldwork in Australia I also teach on two fieldcourses, one around Edinburgh, Scotland in a cross-section of different habitats and another based on one of the Scottish islands, on the island of Great Cumbrae. I am also fairly outdoorsy and some of that experience e.g. from longer climbing trips in remote areas, comes in handy too. It is by no means an exhaustive guide, but hopefully it will be of use to those of you with little or no fieldwork experience, serving as a starting point to your planning. While the work I have experience with is mostly ecological in nature quite a few of those tips should be relevant to any on-ground outdoors fieldwork.

Since I have never planned a complex research expedition from start to finish, those tips are more suited for students, early career researchers and field assistants, as I don’t go into details of planning an independent expedition from scratch, establishing a new field site, team management, catering, obtaining permits etc.

Questions?

Do let me know if there is anything in particular you’d like to know about. Have I missed something? I will try to answer any questions.