Episode 8 – Fieldwork: Researching your past activism

In this episode, Malek Lakhal speaks to Moutaa Amin El Waer about the difficulties inherent to entering a fieldwork you are intimate with, how to create distance with friends when they become interviewees and how to navigate generational differences with people who see you as an elder comrade. Moutaa is a sociologist currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Montréal on student unions in Tunisia. He was very active in student unions when he was studying in Tunis. His fieldwork led him back to the unions that he used to be active in, but this time as a researcher.