The environments in which ethnography is currently being played out are in many ways shifting as part of a world where academic research is increasingly implicated in applied and public scholarship and practice. This calls not simply for new ways of applying ethnographic insights to societal, industry, and policy problems but, we argue, for a reconfiguration of how we understand the possibilities, potentials, and impacts of ethnographic practice when situated as part of a world in progress. It invites us to revise how we understand ethnographic processes, practices, and ethics as they are played out with and through different sets of stakeholders, beyond researchers, participants, and the academic communities of critics (Strathern, 2006) who were their traditional audiences. This new context, we argue, takes us beyond past iterations of applied ethnography because there is a more widespread and institutionally driven aim to seek to do ethnographic work that has impact and may intervene in the world. This new institutionally endorsed and indeed encouraged way of practicing as an ethnographer and scholar brings new configurations and considerations to our profession. It makes partnering with industry or with creative practitioners unsurprising, yet at the same time potentially challenging. This Special Section represents our interest in exploring how this new and emerging context might be conceptualized and how it might be played out through responsible and ethical ways of conducting ethnographic research and forms of intervention in contemporary worlds. © The Author(s) 2017