Sarah Abbott and Philip Vannini’s revised co-authored chapter, “Going public: The reach and impact of ethnographic and academic research,” for the second edition of The Handbook of Arts-Based Research edited by Patricia Leavy. The chapter includes ethnographic approaches in documentary filmmaking, with a look at the documentaries How a People Live (Lisa Jackson, 2013), Walking Under Water (Eliza Kubarska, 2014), Happiness (Thomas Balmès, 2013), Life Off Grid (Jonathan Taggart, 2015), Oorai Kaatha Pasanga (Tanya Benjamin, 2019), and Tide Marks (Sarah Abbott, 2004).
In this chapter, we focus our attention on how ethnographers—arts-inspired ethnographers in particular—can go public with their research, a discussion that may also be useful to academics working with other methodologies. We use the word “ethnography” liberally, including within its broad umbrella all forms of qualitative research carried out with human and nonhuman participants (see Abbott, 2020; Lien & Pálsson, 2019), from interviewing to observation, from oral history to action research, from sensing to performance, and everything in between. We write this chapter from direct experience, having reached out to popular audiences through writing, audiovisual media, and public talks throughout our careers. Though we firmly believe not all topics can (or should) be easily popularized, we are confident in stating that going public with one’s ethnographic research can have enormously positive benefits for the broader public, for research participants, for students and research collaborators, and for ourselves as academics (see Vannini & Abbott, 2019; Vannini & Milne, 2014; Vannini & Mosher, 2013). (Abbott and Vannini, pp. TBA)
Abbott, S. & Vannini, P. (2025). Going public: The reach and impact of ethnographic and academic research. In P. Leavy (Ed.), Handbook of arts-based research (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Link to book here.
Book cover + header image: Artist unknown.