That social realities are constructed through, and mediated by, interpersonal relationships is a truism for most anthropologists. Yet when it comes to assessing the realities of risk and danger in our own fieldwork, we are less adept at applying this basic premise to the world we inhabit. In the preparation of new fieldworkers, most anthropology schools treat fieldwork risk as external to anthropological theorising. For inexperienced, female ethnographers, this can have problematic implications not only for our research but also for our well-being in very real ways. In this article, I draw on my own lived experience of fieldwork in Nigeria to illustrate how gendered risks arise from research relationships and the expectations of exchange that structure them. These risks were partly produced by men's responses to intersections of my identities, as well as by my own assumptions regarding 'good' ethnography and reflexivity. To prepare women (and others) better for the lived experience of fieldwork, therefore, I argue that risk assessment should be integrated into anthropological teaching so that a social constructionist approach to risk and danger can engage anthropological theorisations of positionality and power.
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