Speaker
Description
Being a young researcher and studying a very particular subculture of football fans (ultras) brings a lot of concerns – how to access such a closed group? What are the challenges of a fieldwork for a female researcher in an exclusively masculine environment? Are there some safety issues?
This piece represents some reflections on these research matters based on the personal experience, in particularly the importance of a “gatekeeper” in granting and/or denying access to a closed group, and the challenges of dealing with “women’s fear”.
As a part of her PhD research, the author conducted a number of in-depth interviews (63 total) with the representatives of football fan subculture in 2017-2019 in various regions of Ukraine - Kyiv and Dnipro in the central part of Ukraine, Kharkiv in the East, Lviv in the West and Odessa in the South of Ukraine.
