C01
Oral History & Community Memory
Interviewing elders and knowledge holders, recording memory, contextualising testimony, archiving and responsible reuse.
Request a cohort →OCE Professional Learning
Applied Ethnographic Research
Ethics, Power, Voice & Practice
A practical eight-week programme for researchers, NGOs, civil-society organisations, universities, cultural institutions and postgraduate scholars who need to understand social worlds with greater depth, care and reflexivity.
What the 8-week programme covers
From noticing to interpretation.
The course moves from ethnographic attention and positionality to interviewing, fieldnotes, interpretation and responsible representation.
01
Thinking ethnographically
Observation and interpretation, everyday life, context, meaning and the discipline of noticing what routine research often misses.
02
Power & positionality
Insider and outsider positions, reflexivity, institutional affiliation, trust, silence and the ethnographic gaze.
03
Ethics in sensitive worlds
Consent, confidentiality, vulnerability, distress, deductive disclosure, safe contact and researcher responsibility.
04
Observation & thick description
Participant observation, sequence, space, material objects, field jottings and contextualised description without overclaiming.
05
Ethnographic interviewing
Experience-near questions, probing, silence, contradiction, narrative sequence and following meaning without interrogating.
06
Fieldnotes & reflexive memos
Recording what audio cannot, separating observation from inference and writing enough to question your first interpretation.
07
Interpretation
Patterns, contradictions, silences and exceptional cases; moving from encounter to analysis while retaining social context.
08
Voice & representation
Narrative authority, quotations, pseudonyms, knowledge justice and avoiding voyeuristic or deficit representation.
Who should attend?
For people who work with lived experience.
Researchers, NGO and civil-society teams, programme officers, postgraduate students, educators, evaluators, cultural workers, community researchers and policy teams.
Research teamsNGOsUniversitiesCultural institutionsPostgraduate researchers
How to enrol
Pay, register, receive confirmation.
- Pay ZMW 2,500 or USD 150 using OCE's official bank or Airtel Money channels.
- Keep your transaction reference or proof of payment.
- Complete the OCE Google registration form.
- OCE confirms your place after payment verification and sends cohort details by email.
Registration enquiries: info@oceafrica.org
Ethnography begins in attention and survives through reflexivity.
Cultural training portfolio
Other OCE short courses.
OCE also offers short, practice-led training for organisations and communities working with culture, memory, heritage and indigenous knowledge. Open cohorts and commissioned institutional programmes can be arranged.
C02
Indigenous Knowledge Documentation & Community Governance
Consent, attribution, access rules, community authority, documentation protocols and ethical knowledge stewardship.
Request a cohort →C03
Cultural Mapping, Place Names & Living Heritage
Mapping cultural landscapes, toponymy, place memory, heritage narratives and community-led interpretation.
Request a cohort →C04
Digital Storytelling for Cultural Heritage
Turning authorised cultural knowledge into ethical audio, video, podcast, animation and digital storytelling concepts.
Request a cohort →C05
Researching Sensitive Lives
Ethics, confidentiality, vulnerability, participant voice, difficult disclosures and responsible representation in qualitative research.
Request a cohort →C06
Cultural Project Design & Grant Readiness
Turning cultural ideas into clear problems, theories of change, activities, outputs, budgets, evidence plans and fundable project narratives.
Request a cohort →Commission OCE
Need a tailored training for your institution?
OCE can adapt these short courses to research projects, universities, NGOs, cultural institutions, schools, local authorities and community organisations.