As ethnographers we are spending time in the field, we are interacting with the persons involved and we are building up relationships and trust. Is this merely a strategic procedure to gain ‘interesting’ data? How do we cope as ethnographers with the demands of our work to be ‘out there’ and at the same time distancing ourselves again from the field to continue our academic work? How can we find ways of being out there not merely for strategic reasons but really building up trust and engaging ourselves with the persons of our fields? Five researchers with a long experience in doing ethnographic research are bringing in their expertise and engaging in a dialogue about the possibilities and pitfalls of the central principles of ethnography: Being a participant observer, spending time out in the field, gaining insider knowledge and at the same time having to remain the academic outsider. Ethnographers are challenged by contexts new demands toward research and researchers’ ‘pay back’. Schools are asking: ‘What is our benefit in engaging in research?’ This situation amplified among ethnographers the responsibility in developing new understandings on how to engage with participants and provide trustworthy interpretations of insiders’ knowledge.  More often we, as ethnographers, are asked by context in which we are doing fieldwork to solve problems, reflect collectively on a topic or to make recommendations. Often we need to redefine our procedures to address organisations and participants’ specific needs. The research field is always a place of negotiation: of different power relations; space occupation; ways of translating, etc. In this symposium the ways of dealing with these issues, the struggles, the pitfalls and the chances will be discussed.

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