Raiders Of The Lost Archive

Raiders Of The Lost Archive

TRUE TALES of Discovery in the Social Sciences! Brought to you by Christian Davenport & Jesse Driscoll.

Episodes

October 16, 2023 58 mins

Wendy Pearlman is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, where she is Crown Professor of Middle East Studies. She studies the comparative politics of the Middle East, social movements, and forced migration, and has conducted with more than 500 displaced Syrians since 2012.  In this podcast we discuss how this data was curated ("midwife-ing") to create the award-winning We Crossed A...

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Kristine Eck (Uppsala University) discusses the challenges of working with contemporary and historical police archives.  For quantitative social scientists, how does "the data generation process" introduce measurement bias into the processes that we are actually describing when we employ data generated by the state for counterinsurgency?  How do ongoing state efforts to digitize archives aid and hinder political scientists and data...

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May 19, 2023 54 mins

Ana Bracic (Michigan State University) discusses positionality, entree, and a variety of ethical considerations that informed her work with a highly-vulnerable population in Central Europe.  The candid discussion of how her project on the Roma evolved from an idealized, perfect "magical dataset" ("something as ridiculous as a time-series cross-section dataset on some sort of dimension of Roma exclusion, and it didn't matter what it...

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May 5, 2023 64 mins

The author of Rule and Revenue, In the Interests of Others, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism, and Analytic Narratives describes some of her lesser-known her early-career work: police ride-alongs in Detroit after the social upheavals of the 1960s, interviewing Jimmy Hoffa, and day-drinking with scary police officers (before they went on duty).  A wide-ranging discussion of triangulating data to tell a compelling story...

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April 21, 2023 49 mins

Sarah Parkinson (Johns Hopkins) blunt and honest reflections on how her dissertation project evolved over more than a decade is a reminder that the field is supposed to change the scholar -- not always in ways that can be predicted in advance.  Parkinson discusses her evolutions, both in terms of methods employed and her social identification in the discipline.  There is something here that will be valuable to every ...

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In part two of our "What Did You Do In 2022?" series, Davenport reflects on new tools for archiving as he tests new research frontiers, from BLM to Syria to Colombia.  How should we think about university liability -- and our own -- when handling very sensitive data?  How should these archival materials pass from one generation to the next?  A characteristically wide-ranging conversation on mortality, activism, and the scholarly en...
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After taking a year off from podcasting, the first of a two-part "What Did You Do In 2022?" series.  Driscoll discusses a year of participant observation on the Joint Staff, working in the Europe/NATO/Russia division as a Ukraine Desk Officer.  A candid reflection on a disorienting year, as a micro-conflict scholar re-reads Thomas Schelling, signs NDAs, befriends both 'Russia Hawks' and 'Russia Understand-ists', and learns to write...
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December 24, 2021 49 mins

David Laitin reflects on lessons learned from a lifetime of fieldwork -- and imagines the road ahead.  How did watching the Sardana folk dance in Cataolonia reveal the limits of Gramscian hegemony as an explanatory framework?  After one just decides, in middle life, to "learn Russian", how does one get started?  How does one arrange to take a family, with two young children in tow, to Nigeria?  True adventures on the social science...

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December 23, 2021 34 mins

Sarah Cameron (University of Maryland) shares practical advice for conducting archival research in non-English languages, based on her her experiences living in Kazakhstan conducting research for her award-winning HUNGRY STEPPE: FAMINE, VIOLENCE, AND THE MAKING OF SOVIET KAZAKHSTAN.  Why start with children's elementary school textbooks to develop a research vocabulary?  The podcast's first bona-fide historian!

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December 22, 2021 60 mins

David Cunningham (Wash U St. Louis), next in our "when the field is home" series, discusses the archival and interview research that yielded KLANSVILLE USA: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS-ERA KU KLUX KLAN and THERE'S SOMETHING HAPPENING HERE: THE NEW LEFT, THE KLAN AND FBI COUNTERINTELLIGENCE. How do we mentor graduate students planning work on topics that will put them in close proximity to dangerous political actors?  The ...

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November 1, 2021 48 mins
In this episode Cynthia Enloe -- prolific feminist writer, political theorist, inspiring teacher, and all-around badass -- discusses her early fieldwork experiences in Malaysia.  How is it possible to write six books about war, violence, and ethnicity and never think seriously about gender performance?  How can you be self-reflective on the page, and embrace the first-person voice, without making yourself the most interesting perso...

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October 13, 2021 49 mins

Kanisha Bond (SUNY Binghamton) on doing participant observation on the contemporary Antifa movement, the blurring of the line between researcher and activist roles, thinking about America as a comparative case, and thinking purposefully about the need to sometimes step back from research that can be repurposed by the state as op-sec.  The third in our "when the field is home" series.

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September 29, 2021 35 mins

Asfandyr Mir (Stanford - CISAC) shares his reflections on the challenges of presenting himself as a neutral scientist observer when researching the U.S. drone war in Pakistan.  The second in a "when the field is home" series.

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September 23, 2021 49 mins

Tariq Thachil (UPenn) is the first in a "when the field is home" series.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of being able to present as a local?  Is being ambushed on social media part of what we should be preparing students for?  Does it "count" as ethnographic observation if you are also looking for measurable indicators for quantitative tests as you go?  How should we teach THEFT OF AN IDOL? 

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September 15, 2021 59 mins

Zachariah Mamphilly (CUNY) answers the big questions about agency and responsibility.  What does it mean to be an oppositional intellectual in the field of political violence?  Should we expect any accountability for the role that our field has played in legitimizing the war on terror as we chase grants and policy relevance?  As we professionalize our students, who are we teaching them to write for? 

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August 30, 2021 64 mins

Leonard Wantchekon (Princeton University), activist and scholar, reflects on his journey.  Saddle wisdom, "The Tao of Leonard", and practical advice for early-career scholars.

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June 22, 2021 44 mins

Jen Murtazashvili (University of Pittsburgh) speaking candidly about Afghanistan, course correction while in the field, and the importance of publicly admitting mistakes.

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June 10, 2021 39 mins

The legendary Bob Bates describes his fieldwork experiences Zambian mining townships -- getting in, building trust, staying safe, and writing up.  Can qualitative methods be taught?

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May 21, 2021 46 mins

Meeting The Host #2: Jesse Driscoll recalls some memorable characters from his time in Tajikistan and Georgia.

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May 18, 2021 50 mins

Meeting The Host #1: Christian Davenport (University of Michigan) shares some hard-won wisdom from his experiences in Rwanda.

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