Elise! Thank you very very much for pointing out that call for papers! No matter how obvious movements may look in retrospect, I'm still impressed at how cool it feels to find other people interested in the same areas... are you coming to our panel about engagement and training at EASA in August?

Helloo elise... I had joined when you first sent me the link, but was soooo caught up in facebook and linked in, but I'm a bit bored of them so trying my hand at this now :) and you're here which makes it much more exciting xxxx

I might be in Malta over parts of the summer, but I thought about you when I saw the off the beaten track even because one of their topics is food ... so of course you immediately came to mind.

But I'd like to meet them - I didn't know there were 'expedition, research in applied anthropology' based in Malta... so what with my work with Friends of the Earth, the Engaging Anthropology in Practice project and Design Anth stuff I've been doing here I'd love to know more about what these guys do when they're in Gozo.

Oh and I saw you guys discussing identity below - are you familiar with the 2000 article by Brubaker and Cooper "beyond identity"... I think that if you are going engage with such a slippery concept such as 'identity' this article really helps to decide how you want to use identity and how you don't want to use it as a concept...

what are you doing anyway Elise... now that PhD is finit!

Je parle un petit peu de Français, mais... pas tres bien... Regrettable, je sais! C'est comme on dit ici: Français avec des cheveux sur les dents! ;-)

Yes, I have read Sutton's book.

I agree with you on fieldwork. 100%. But how do you study memory in the field? Or such an undefinable/fluid concept as identity? By looking at facets of life like food, housing, religion, etc. And also through discourse analysis and such. But I find it very hard extract the right information to form a comprehensive story. It's all so... fragmented. How do I link the information I gathered through life histories to the information I gathered from participant observation during Shabbat meals? To be honest, I feel my education so far failed me on this part. But then again, this is probably not something you can learn/teach.

An other problem is the time frame: I'm learning as I go here, on the fly so to say. None of my classes up 'till now really touch upon the topics I'm studying for my thesis. That means learning the theory and doing the fieldwork are happening at the same time (on top off all the regular work for uni: papers, exams, ...). This leads to a constant re-evaluation of my fieldwork which in turn means only incremental advances in insight into the problematic of my research question. Quite frustrating.

Ok, enough venting of frustration here!

I'm seriously considering applying again for the Malta summerschool. So yes, maybe untill next summer!

Cheers.