This forum will bring novice and experienced researchers engaged in “studying up”, a form of research that shifts the gaze upwards to social, political and economic institutions. This forum explores the question of how “studying up” can be a political, critical, radical praxis.

We invite abstracts for papers related to (but not limited to) the following topics:

+ Re-thinking “studying up” – theorizing research practice beyond elite studies
+ The embodied experience – the re/production of power dynamics in the research encounter
+ Gaining access – obstacles and strategies of circumventing them
+ Adversarial and confrontational methods – accessing “dirty data”, militant observation, critical incidents, political activist ethnography, going public
+ Institutions, participants, informants, adversaries, enemies? Who are our “subjects”?
+ Research for and with whom, and for what purpose? The politics and possibilities of research

Please send your name, affiliation, contact information, and abstract 250-500 words to studying.power@gmail.com.