Organizers: Jacob Saindon, Michael McCanless, Ian Spangler
We intend for this session to be a forum which brings together a diversity of perspectives from geographers regarding their experiences conducting fieldwork at professional conferences. Because conferences provide insight into professional practices, knowledge production, and social networks—as well as the fissures and cracks that form in between those things—social scientists (especially geographers) often attend conferences as part of their qualitative research. However, methodological frameworks for social science researchers navigating the professional conference as a field site tend to develop indirectly, for instance, through word of mouth or by reading secondhand accounts of other researchers who attend and analyze conferences. This session aims to put conference methods front and center and conduct a lively discussion about methodology, positionality, and strategies for approaching the conference site from an ethnographic perspective.