Rethinking Educational Ethnography 2026 The 12th Rethinking Educational Ethnography Conference

At ECER 2010 in Helsinki, researchers from the Ethnography Network discussed emerging concerns about virtual ethnography and discovered a shared interest. This shared interest started the first Rethinking Educational Ethnography conference. Since then, eleven international conferences were organized in Boras, Helsinki, Porto, Barcelona, Napoli, Copenhagen, Klaipeda, Budapest, Graz, Freiburg, and Zaragoza. Each year, participants discuss topics related to ethnographic epistemology, methodology, and practice. It is a small conference with a maximum of 20 paper sessions, where papers are distributed prior to the conference. Every paper session provides 45 minutes, 15 minutes for the author(s) to emphasise main points and arguments, and the remaining 30 minutes for a common conversation and discussion of the paper. There is a regular wide range of experienced and inexperienced participants from all parts of Europe.

 

The twelfth conference builds on the culture of previous Rethinking Educational Ethnography conferences and is organised by the Bangor Poverty and Learning in Urban Schools (PLUS) team in the School of Education at Bangor University, in collaboration with the European Educational Research Association EERA Network 19 Ethnography.

The conference theme highlights two issues for discussion: Ethnography as a methodology for research both in educational institutions and educative facilities, and ethnography as a platform of research for policy advocacy that engages with politicians, power brokers and policymakers. Ethnography uses a range of data collection methods that have the capacity to document lived experiences, describe the context including the historical context, and to confront the circumstances. It also has the capacity to provide a range of quality insights, deep knowledge and deep sense of possibilities but also professional and social obligations to investigate power relations and their inequalities. With respect to rising to the challenges of broaching the nexus between practice, research, theory and policy, it calls on research-active practitioners to interrogate these links and the ethics of responsibilities to engage not only in current debates about the role of ethnography influencing policy decisions but also in actions to this effect. These issues are reflected in the call for papers, and there is much to be learned from delegates sharing their ethnographic research undertaken in different national contexts where increasingly education policies are subject to policy learning. This is always more fruitful when analyses shed light on the conditions where policies have impact, which is made more likely if they are the result of research-informed practical actions to change the circumstances and lived realities where necessary.  

The Rethinking Educational Ethnography Conference enables and encourages active participation of both experienced and inexperienced researchers. Abstracts may refer to completed studies, field work, or work in progress. Your abstract should relate to the call and typically includes sections on main points, fieldwork methods, analytical methods, and conclusions. It should not exceed 400 words (excluding references) and should be submitted in English. Please submit to: ECERConference@bangor.ac.uk.

 

Papers are invited from submitted abstracts and must include a minimum of 2000 words. All papers are shared among conference participants to spend less time on presentations and focus on conversation and discussion of papers during the sessions. The conference links to the Journal Ethnography and Education, which welcomes submissions of papers that have been developed from the conference.