Following one’s nose: ‘Smellwalks’ through qualitative data

Abstract

This Note utilises the idea of ‘smellwalks’ as a novel way of engaging with qualitative data. Based on a larger study of victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, it argues that smelling data – and allowing ourselves to viscerally imagine the odours and scents that the data evoke for us – can foster deeper insights into interviewees’ embodied experiences; in this case, embodied experiences of war and armed conflict. Within the data – consisting of 63 semi-structured interviews with victims-/survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Colombia and Uganda – there were frequent references to food and cooking. This Note follows the scent trails within two particular interviews – one from BiH and the other from Colombia.