Opening the notebook: How and why human geographers take fieldnotes

Abstract This short paper introduces a special section exploring how human geographers use research notebooks. It outlines why a fuller exchange about how exactly we do ethnographic note‐taking in human geography is worthwhile, and describes a series of conference sessions in which a group of human geographers took the relatively bold step of showing each other examples of what could be found inside their notebooks. It also provides an overview of how the papers in the special section might help us all to consider the variety of options available to us when we choose to work in this way.