Navigating the challenges of fieldwork and childcare: revisiting ‘muddy glee’

This commentary emerges from our collective interest in, and reflections on, the multiple ways in which parents working within Development Geography in UK academia negotiate the complexities of combining periods of overseas fieldwork with family life. Here, we bring our varied experiences of navigating these challenges (emotional, bureaucratic, and practical) into conversation with Bracken and Mawdsley's ‘Muddy glee,’ highlighting the ways in which a recognition of academics', especially female academics', childcare responsibilities has been largely absent from discussions around conducting fieldwork, specifically development fieldwork in the global South.

Short Abstract

This is a collective reflection on the multiple ways in which parents working within Development Geography in UK academia negotiate the complexities of combining periods of overseas fieldwork with family life.