1. Start before going. This is a list of things you should
get together before leaving: letter from advisor(s); letter from university;
letter from local affiliated institution (if you have one); business card; and
short summary of your project. You will probably need this to access local libraries such as the Jawarhalal Nehru University's (below). Make a rough draft of your research schedule
detailing the aims of your trip and how you intend to achieve them. Save up
time upon arrival by making a list with addresses of places you want to go
(e.g., libraries, archives, government offices, universities) and take some
time to become acquainted with their location. The same goes for people who you
might want to meet: make a list of contacts and email them in advance (but
don't rely on this, see below). I'm assuming you have visited your research area
previously, but if not, you need to think about items such as local phone,
Internet and transport.
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| Jawarhalal Nehru University, New Delhi |
2. Don't rely on
e-mails. Few things
will hamper down your research as waiting for people to reply to your emails.
The truth is that most people will never prioritize (or even read) an email
from an unknown student posing strange questions about a remote topic. In the
hierarchy of research communication, emails should come last, followed shortly by
the telephone. Of course, getting hold of someone's mobile number is always
better than having his or her office number. But even phone conversations can
lead to dead ends. As many researchers discover, scheduled meetings often get
cancelled at the last minute. If this happens, the fallback option is simply to
show up at the person's workplace - sometimes you do need to be a bit pushy.
Naturally, you must be careful not to come across as rude (i.e., apologize, explain
that you won't take much time) but, in general, it's worth taking the risk. My
experience is that once people see you they'll grant you a couple of minutes or
so, mainly because it will get you out off their backs.
3. Sort out your office
space. Unless you to
intend to spend your day at home (and then you should be asking yourself why going?),
you need to take some time to consider where you will be working. Researchers
conducting archival research will have a slight easier life on this point.
Nonetheless, they still need to think about library opening hours, where to
have lunch/water and, most importantly, Internet access (none of the
libraries/archives that I visited in India provides wireless access). Alternatives
are, in my experience, limited to two options: (1) Internet cafes and (2)
co-working spaces. In regards to the former, you should prepare beforehand a
list of Internet cafes that are convenient for you and that will enable you to
work for extended periods of time (i.e., a bar or a sports bar will probably
not be a very good choice). Moreover, in India, I have found that many of the
places offering Internet access online, do not once you are there (e.g., most
Coffee Days and Costa Cafes do not). Ideally, you should check with someone
and/or ask recommendations from locals. Online resources (such as blogs) often provide
lists of Internets cafes in your research area (in the case of Mumbai, I found
a very helpful map at the Mumbai Boss). The other option is co-working
spaces. In Delhi, I was lucky enough to find a social networking cafe in Hauz
Khaz village called Book Your Dream, which offers Wi-Fi, coffee with
cookies and a beautiful lake view. All this in exchange for a contribution (left
to your discretion) to an NGO promoting education in local slums.
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My office at Book Your Dream in Haus Khaz Village, Delhi
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4. Organize a photo library. Turns out your phone camera and tablet are an excellent field research tool. If you are like me, then you'll have filled their memory after a couple of days with pictures of libraries, interview subjects, street scenes, posters, slums, pages of books, documents and videos of political rallies. My advise on this unfolds in five parts. First, create a folder in your computer for all the photos that you will take during your field trip. Do not mix these with the non-research related photos that you might have taken during this trip. Second, you should to copy your phone/tablet photos to your laptop as often as possible so that you always have sufficient space for new pictures/videos. It is always frustrating to delete potentially important material from your phone in order to make up space for more. Third, once you have copied them, reduce the size of the files so that they do not take an inordinate amount of space. Fourth, after doing this, you should copy them again to a backup device (e.g., external drive, dropbox, self-email, etc). The thing to remember here is to have the photos saved in more than one source. Finally, when possible (this can be done once you're back from field research), organize the photo files in your computer into categories. This will facilitate searching through them.
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Note to self: do not ride the Delhi metro at rush hour
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5. Don't scare people
with your CV. Extensive
experience with grant application might give researchers the impression that
listing their achievements is a natural way to introduce oneself. Yet, when it
comes to field research, the opposite may well be true. Unless your CV
increases the chances of interviewing someone or being entrusted with data, you
should seek to reduce the information about you to the bare minimum: you name,
your university and your field of study. In my experience researching in India,
I have found that interview subject are sometimes scared off by too much
information about my academic curriculum (or my personal trajectory). Instead,
a much better strategy is to compliment the person who you are talking to and
thanking her for the time granted. Naturally, this involves doing some
background work about the person (i.e., if you want to talk to an academic, you
should read some of her or his articles in advance) before meeting her.
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