Field research is the process of collecting data and developing theory through direct interaction with people and their lifeworlds. It is a unique and often intensive, challenging experience. In this note, I reflect on half a year of doing field research in Nepal, the heart of my doctoral research. My stay was split into an initial five-month period from the end of July to December 2024, and another six-week episode in January and February 2025. With my colleague Samiksha Neupane and other team members of the DYNAMIGS project, we carried out a large survey and in-depth biographical interviews with young Nepalis across three areas: the metropolitan capital Kathmandu Valley, the hilltop village Barpak, and the market town Inaruwa. We examine how participants’ migration and staying aspirations change throughout young adulthood, and how they are linked to wellbeing.
Rather than only discussing fieldwork, I also want to focus on fieldlife: the stuff that happens outside data collection, shaping so much of the field experience. To be sure, my experiences are personal and not generalisable to all field research endeavours. The thoughts shared here are also not new—indeed, some may read as cliché—and have often been explored more deeply and eloquently elsewhere. Nonetheless, they may resonate with others returning from a field stay, and hopefully are food for thought for those preparing for one.
Figure 1. Volleyball match in Barpak. Copyright: Josef Neubauer
Adaptations are opportunities
Fieldwork is certainly the most uncertain phase of a social research project. Collecting data in the ‘real world’ means facing an infinite number of forces outside one’s control, many of which are unforeseen. To recruit respondents for an online survey, we planned to run paid advertisements on social media platforms widely used in Nepal. The first days of piloting the survey were bleak. We received far fewer respondents than hoped, and initial changes to the ads and survey availed to nothing. With a twinge of panic, I emailed my supervisors. ‘These are precisely the insights such a project can generate,’ one of them said, trying to calm my nerves—admittedly, I struggled to fully embrace this wisdom in the thick of it, but came to appreciate it later.
With some more tweaks, the ads and survey worked better in our first research area Kathmandu Valley, though only modestly so. After some sleepless nights, my colleague and I took a fateful decision: we dropped the survey plans for the more challenging rural research site and decided to complement the online sample from Kathmandu Valley with in-person survey interviews.
Two weeks later, we had gathered and trained a team of five field researchers and were knocking on nearly 3,000 doors across Kathmandu Valley. In this way, we doubled the sample size and balanced some of the bias from the online survey, yielding a large and more robust composite sample. The in-person survey took us to all corners of the valley, where we talked to diverse people in their homes, offering a glimpse of their worlds—impressions that breathe life into the statistical dataset. The process also taught us valuable skills in planning, carrying out, and supervising rigorous face-to-face surveys on a shoestring budget. So looking back, I am actually grateful the initial survey plan fell through.
Of course, not all adaptations go well, and thwarted plans can be painful to let go of. However, even major adjustments like changing the research location or ‘moving the field online’ open up new spaces for inquiry, as the debates on remote fieldwork following the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate (Watson & Lupton, 2022). Looking for opportunities in adaptations may thus not only cushion the blow of thwarted plans but also yield new insights and perspectives. With daily surprises in the field, a flexible anything-can-happen attitude is perhaps just as important as a sound research plan.
Figure 2. Collecting in-person survey data in Kathmandu. Copyright: Josef Neubauer
Time matters
Obviously, longer field stays allow researchers to collect richer data. But critically, time living in the field also transforms one’s perspective and relations to the places and people one studies. This insight is nothing new to anthropologists and many seasoned field researchers (Millar, 2018). Still, I want to share my experience here, if only to arm colleagues to negotiate longer field stays with funding bodies, supervisors, and other stakeholders.
Living in Nepal, and Kathmandu in particular, for over six months allowed me to immerse myself and helped to gradually normalise rather than exceptionalise what I observed and studied. Such fieldlife goes beyond deliberate observations. I refer here to the mundane activities outside fieldwork, the life that happens when one temporarily forgets about the study. This helps build knowledge subconsciously which, more than explicit field records, becomes the invisible backdrop grounding later analysis.
Slowly, the initial exoticising glasses gave way to a more sober and nuanced lens. I started to ‘get a feel’ for many of the daily experiences, customs, and conditions of my participants. To give just a few examples: I adapted my rhythm to the busy early mornings and eery silence after 10 pm in the streets of the capital. I spent countless afternoons sipping tea with friends and colleagues at temple squares popular among Nepali youth. Riding a scooter through Kathmandu’s rush hour traffic every day, I slowly habituated to the near-death anxiety, pollution, and stuckness. I got carried away by the ecstatic crowd at pop concerts of Nepali diaspora stars. I crashed at local hotel rooms with friends who wanted to avoid facing their parents after a long night out. I lived through the seasonal spectre of Dengue and regularly suffered the notorious Kathmandu maladies of food poisoning and throat infections. And I learned to sleep through (and enjoy!) the beat-heavy modern folk songs blared throughout long bumpy bus rides across the country.
To be sure, I still lived an extremely privileged life, much different from that of most of my participants. Most of the time, I had my own apartment in urban Kathmandu, ate out meals, was not expected to be home at certain times or bound by family household chores, and so on. So my ‘experiential understanding’ is, of course, just scratching the surface. Still, daily interactions and shared experiences over months opened a gradually more nuanced window into my participants’ lifeworlds.
It is difficult to conduct long field research in academia today. Teaching and administrative duties fragment the year, while funding pressures, security concerns, and personal responsibilities often necessitate shorter and/or repeated stays (Jeffrey & Troman, 2004). In my case, there is also a stark difference between my fieldlife of nearly five months in Kathmandu Valley and the few weeks each in Barpak and Inaruwa. Perhaps the upshot is, then, to max out field time under the given circumstances, and advocate with institutions about the benefits of long field stays.
Figure 3. Youth meeting spot in Patan, Kathmandu Valley. Copyright: Josef Neubauer
Breaks are vital
While field research is extraordinarily enriching, it is also exhausting. As we often worked flexibly and off-hours to accommodate participants, I realised how important it was to regularly retreat from the bustle of fieldwork to recuperate and reflect. Most prominently, I cherished my home in Kathmandu Valley, a (fairly) quiet studio flat. It offered comforts beyond most Nepali homes, which I was initially acutely self-conscious of, but later accepted as a ‘cocoon’ helping me maintain my wellbeing and zest during the long field stay.
At times, however, I needed more distance. I felt strangely confined in the vastness of the valley, by its pollution, noise, and daily work. So I went on short trips, from an overnight stay at the valley’s ridge to a week-long trek in the Himalayas. This helped me rejuvenate and recollect myself for the next fieldwork episode. The main challenge was, of course, to stop thinking about my research, or at least stop working during those getaways.
I also came back to Europe over Christmas for two weeks, before returning to Nepal for a final six weeks of fieldwork. This second stay was not originally planned but became necessary after a series of delays and adaptations in the first five months. While I enjoyed the break in Europe, the time and distance made it challenging to ‘mentally re-enter’ the field once I returned. My personal takeaway is to prioritise short breaks that offer some distance from immediate fieldwork, yet maintain a level of proximity and continuity with it. More critically, a personal space of comfort to retreat during fieldwork is paramount for longer field stays.
Figure 4.Trekking in the Himalayas on a fieldwork break. Copyright: Josef Neubauer
Focus is precious
Around half a year in the field—that will surely allow me to work on some smaller projects on the side? Or so I thought. And so I went, with a list of multiple papers and articles to write, and a PhD course and two local conferences to attend. Needless to say, I quickly realised I had been too ambitious. I struggled to find the time and space to give these tasks, often unrelated to fieldwork, their due attention. Conversely, work on such ‘distant’ tasks mentally yanked me out of my surroundings, disrupting the immersion and continuity of the field experience.
In fact, even juggling multiple fieldwork tasks at once often left me rushed and half-focused, at times with troubling consequences. One morning, I hurried to a participant’s home with my colleague to conduct a long biographical interview. Just before, I had met our field researchers in a different part of Kathmandu valley, where they were carrying out survey interviews that day. Over the next few hours, they called in repeatedly, as today’s neighbourhood raised many unexpected challenges. As I was trying to focus on the interview while supervising the survey from afar, I also kept a close eye on the time: I had a meeting scheduled at midday to discuss a co-authored article. Leaving the interview early, I jumped on the call in a nearby café, while my survey colleagues continued to phone me with tricky problems. Once I finally managed to focus on the meeting, my landlady texted me: she had just discovered that my entire apartment was flooded. It turned out that I had left the water tap on when I had mindlessly run out that morning.
Focus, I learned the hard way, was indeed precious, especially during fieldwork. At the end of my stay, I had postponed or abandoned much of what I had thought I would ‘do on the side.’ Retrospectively, bringing a bagload of commitments to the field appears to be a surefire path to distraction, stress, and half-baked results. Instead, freeing the schedule as much as possible benefits immersion, focus, and depth during the field experience.
Figure 5. Finalising a manuscript while travelling through a mountain village (Purano Laprak). Copyright: Josef Neubauer
Networks, networks, networks
My final point may particularly reek of cliché. But this reflexive note would be grossly incomplete without emphasising the critical role of partnerships, contacts, and support networks during my field stay. Scaling up my PhD research to a collaborative project with the Nepali research organisation Social Science Baha meant that almost all of the field research was planned and carried out jointly with my colleague Samiksha Neupane. Her theoretical ideas, contextual knowledge, and research experience were a game changer for essential project decisions and corrected many of my misconceptions and -interpretations early on, alongside easing logistical arrangements and translations. The collaboration gave me an academic home during my stay, including a desk and a network of scholars with vast research expertise and contacts. The latter helped establish links to key informants across research areas and provided entry points to local communities. Excitingly, the institutional partnership also involves an upcoming field stay of Nepali team members in Austria to interview young Nepalis living abroad about changes in their migration and staying aspirations.
Beyond the benefits to research, networks obviously mattered significantly for my wellbeing during life in the field. I developed meaningful relationships and friendships that helped me weather various challenges and rendered my stay a warm and emotional experience beyond the moving interactions of fieldwork. Though making my departure more difficult, these relationships bind me emotionally to the field—and ensure that I will return, soon.
References
Jeffrey, B., & Troman, G. (2004). Time for ethnography. British Educational Research Journal, 30(4), 535–548. https://doi.org/10.1080/0141192042000237220
Millar, G. (2018). Ethnographic Peace Research: The Underappreciated Benefits of Long-term Fieldwork. International Peacekeeping, 25(5), 653–676. https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2017.1421860
Watson, A., & Lupton, D. (2022). Remote Fieldwork in Homes During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Video-Call Ethnography and Map Drawing Methods. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 21, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/16094069221078376
