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On the most beautiful day of the week and in stunning autumn weather, we took a walk in Weesp last Friday, 21 October, for the Walking Seminar. The theme was   how to think about translations in our research?   [1] We started off with the following questions:  Doing research involves translating. Or, put differently, many activities that we engage in as ethnographic researchers may be glossed as translating. Events in the field you translate into (mould into? cook up as?) field notes. Notes you translate into (mobilise in the telling of? digest so that they become?) stories. Stories you juxtapose – contrast, compare, link – in a process called analysis (and what is translated there into what?). In the process, sounds become words, tastes dissolve in sentences, questions into assertions or vice versa. Here is the question: what is involved in these translations; what in attending to them as translations (rather than using other metaphors/models such as moulding or cooking)...

Guest blog post by Anna Kaijser and Martin Hultman, Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University On  October 3-4, a group of eleven artists and researchers within the humanities or social sciences gathered at Vårdnäs, a village south of Linköping, Sweden. Each participant had brought a question, incited by their own work and related to understanding, acting upon and living with environmental crisis. These questions, we brought with us on a hike through the countryside, intended to accentuate embodiment and movement and evoke a sense of the own body’s place in nature. In pairs, we walked through forests and meadows, and along the Stora Rängen Lake. The sun was shining and the landscape sparkled with magnificent autumn colours. Most of us had never met before, and thus were introduced to each other’s work through the questions. Every 40 minutes we stopped to change conversation partners. This is slow intellectual speed dating, somebody joked. At  the end of the walk, the...

The next walking seminar will be on  Friday   October 21st   from  13:00 o’clock  until early evening. This walking seminar will be devoted to the question how to think about   translations  in our research. Doing research involves translating. Or, put differently, many activities that we engage in as ethnographic researchers may be glossed   as   translating. Events in the field you translate into (mould into? cook up as?) field notes. Notes you translate into (mobilise in the telling of? digest so that they become?) stories. Stories you juxtapose – contrast, compare, link – in a process called analysis (and what is translated there into what?). In the process, sounds become words, tastes dissolve in sentences, questions into assertions or vice versa. Here is the question: what is involved in these translations; what in attending to them   as   translations (rather than using other metaphors/models such as ...