The border and the pandemic.

© 2020 European Association of Social Anthropologists. 1 Later, I came across https://docs.google.com/docum ent/d/1clGj GABB2 h2qbd uTgfq ribHm og9B6 P0NvM gVuiH ZCl8/edit?pli=1#headi ng=h.ze8ug 1cqk5lo and https://docs.google.com/docum ent/ d/1OrVa VQi_UPA54 eUX8u ‐mVbUZ pUHsN xG5VC fGDRF ‐Hu0/edit?pli=1#headi ng=h.btb7o oxp8lx4, both tremendously thorough and useful collectively created resources (Accessed April 2020). the blog were minimal: it should be a collective safe space to post, reflect and engage with one another. In addition, two creative exercises – depicting the present and either the past or the future – provided encouragement for artistic exploration. Similarly, I believed that instead of postponing fieldwork (the administration’s initial suggestion), we had to seize the opportunity. This was our chance to study an unfolding event while creating a support network in times of tremendous change. But, thinking up new projects and trying out different methodologies was, in large part, a collective endeavour. Students had to find a topic, a group or a practice that they were curious about. Simultaneously, we began considering methodologies.1 We deliberated the challenges of online interviewing with people they had never met face‐to‐face, we thought up spaces where they could ‘hang out’ or do participant observations through video, audio or chats, and we contemplated the personal and ethical challenges that come with opening up online social networks to interlocutors. At the time of writing they are deep in fieldwork. I hold open video chats weekly where they can share experiences with peers and receive a word of encouragement or advice from me. The issues they raise and the challenges they face are no different from those I encountered in my own fieldwork projects. How to handle strong emotional reactions during interviews? Where to draw the line between personal life and fieldwork? How to recognise and overcome the discomfort of hanging out with a group of strangers? Both teaching and fieldwork exercise have their challenges, but the community we built and the support it provided is, I believe, the most important lesson of all.