Starting in 2012, The University of Florida will offer a series of courses on research methods in cultural anthropology. The courses carry graduate credit and are open to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals. Two courses are offered this year:

• Text Analysis in Cultural anthropology, May 28-June 29, 2012
• Geospatial Analysis in Cultural Anthropology, May 14-June 15, 2012

Each course has 12 hours of lecture and 33 hours of online, interactive instruction. Courses are limited to 18 participants. For more information, visit the Methods Mall or the Distance Learning program at the University of Florida.

The 2012 Anthropology Methods Mall is online with information about five, NSF-supported opportunities for methods training in cultural anthropology.

1. SCRM (Short Courses on Research Methods. For those with the Ph.D.)
2. SIRD (Summer Institute on Research Design. For graduate students)
3. SFTM (Summer Field Training in Methods program in Bolivia. For graduate students)
4. SIMA (Smithsonian Institution Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology. For graduate students)
5. WRMA (Conference Workshops on Research Methods in Anthropology. For all anthropologists)

Short Courses on Research Methods

Now in its eighth year, the SCRM (Short Courses on Research Methods) program is for cultural anthropologists who already have the Ph.D. Three five-day courses are offered during summer 2012 at the Duke University Marine Lab in Beaufort, North Carolina.

• Behavioral Observation in Ethnographic Research (Instructors: Raymond Hames and Michael Paolisso) July 16-20, 2012.
• Social Network Analysis (Instructors: Jeffrey Johnson and Christopher McCarty) July 23-27, 2012.
• Analyzing Video Data (Instructors: Elizabeth Cartwright and Jerome Crowder) July 30-August 3, 2012.

Apply to the Short Courses on Research Methods here. The deadline is Feb. 15, 2012.

Summer Institute on Research Design

Now in its 17th year, the SIRD (Summer Institute on Research Design) is an intensive, three-week course for graduate students in cultural anthropology who are preparing their doctoral research proposals. The 2011 course runs from July 16-August 3, 2012 at the Duke University Marine Laboratory. Instructors: Jeffrey Johnson, Susan Weller, H. Russell Bernard, and Amber Wutich.

Apply to the Summer Institute on Research Design here. The deadline is March 1, 2012.

Summer Field Training in Methods

Now in its ninth year, the SFTM (Summer Field Training in Methods) program in Bolivia is open to graduate students in cultural anthropology. This course involves five weeks of fieldwork in the Bolivian Amazon from June 3-July 7, 2012. Instructors: Ricardo Godoy, Victoria Reyes-Garcia, Susan Tanner, and Colleen Nyberg.

Apply to the Bolivia Field School here. The deadline is Feb. 15, 2012.

Smithsonian Institution Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology

Now in its fourth year, the SIMA (Smithsonian Institution Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology) is open to graduate students in cultural anthropology and related, interdisciplinary programs (Indigenous Studies, Folklore, etc.) who are interested in using museum collections as a data source and who are preparing for research careers. The course runs from June 25-July 20, 2012. Instructors: Candace Greene, Nancy Parezo, Joshua Bell, and Gwyneira Isaac, plus visiting lecturers.

Apply to the Smithsonian Institution Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology here. The deadline is March 1, 2012.

Workshops in Research Methods in Anthropology

The WRMA (Workshops in Research Methods in Anthropology) program offers one-day workshops in conjunction with national meetings of anthropologists.

Now in its ninth year, the Field Methods in Bolivia training program takes place among the Tsimane’, a native Amazonian society of farmers and foragers in Bolivia. The field school is directed by Ricardo Godoy (Brandeis). Training lasts five weeks (June 3 – July 7, 2012) and focuses on methods to collect ecological, demographic, economic, cognitive, anthropometric, and health data. The training builds on and is informed by the Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study (TAPS), a panel study in progress since 1999 to understand the consequences of market exposure for the Tsimane’. Instructors for the 2012 program include V. Reyes-García (Brandeis and Barcelona), R. Godoy (Brandeis), C. Nyberg (UMass-Boston) and S. Tanner (Georgia).

Read more about Field Methods in Bolivia.

Call for papers on schooling and local knowledge of indigenous people and rural societies for a special issue of Learning and Individual Differences

Victoria Reyes-García (ICREA-UAB & Brandeis U) and Ricardo Godoy (Brandeis U).

This is a formal request for papers for a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Learning and Individual Differences, on schooling and local knowledge among indigenous peoples and rural societies that will appear in 2012.

Summary

For most of human history, and in the bulk of rural areas of low-income nations, people’s main form of human capital has been local knowledge of the environment, yet we know relatively little about its origins, measurement, distribution, transmission, and compatibility with modern forms of human capital.  This is a call for empirical papers on modern and traditional forms of human capital among contemporary indigenous peoples, with a focus on (but not limited to) the following:

• Methods to measure local knowledge
• Comparative studies on the market and non-market returns to local knowledge
• Secular trends and modes of transmission and paths of local knowledge
• Synergies between local knowledge and schooling
• Evaluations to strengthen local knowledge (i.e., through contextualized schooling)

Original research consisting of case studies (especially if they are comparative) and review articles will be considered.  The special issue will be published in Learning and Individual Differences. Papers will be peer-reviewed by at least three external specialists.  Authors wishing to send an article for the Special Issue should prepare their manuscript according to the Instructions for Authors of L&ID.  In line with L&ID, we will consider two formats: full-length articles (10,000 words) and short empirical reports or case studies (3,000 words); the page limits do not include the abstract, references, figures, or tables.  Articles should reach the editorial office before December 1^st, 2011 to receive full consideration.  When submitting articles, authors should indicate that their manuscript is intended for the special issue.  Contact Victoria Reyes-Garcia (victoria.reyes@uab.cat) or Ricardo Godoy (rgodoy@brandeis.edu) if you have questions about the submission.

This summer the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, will hold its 63rd annual Summer Institute in Survey Research Techniques. As the name implies, the Summer Institute is organized around methods in survey research. But the organizers take a broad view of what counts as survey research, and several courses integrate qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis.

Here are four relevant courses:

• Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methods: Introduction and Overview (Bill Axinn)
• Qualitative Data Analysis: With and Without the Use of Computers (Eben Weitzman)
• Introduction to Focus Groups as Qualitative Research (David Morgan)
• Qualitative Methods: Overview and Semi-Structured Interviewing (Nancy Riley)

For more information, including a complete list of courses, please visit the Summer Institute’s website.

Today, we’re happy to launch the new version of our website. The old version served us well for almost eight years—a really long time in web years. The Internet has changed a lot since 2002, and the re-designed site takes advantage of some of those changes.

The site is built on the WordPress platform. Although designed originally for blogs, WordPress is used more and more often to publish other types of sites, too. Here are some of the key benefits of moving our site to this platform:

• It will be easier to add dynamic content—like this post—using the site’s blog features. For now, we intend to use these features mainly to make announcements related to the NSF-funded courses we support in the Methods Mall; we aren’t ready to join the ranks of great anthropological blogs like Savage Minds or Neuroanthropology just yet. But we do have a few special posts planned for the near future — including Russ Bernard’s thoughts about the mixed methods movement and how it relates to what we do at QualQuant.
• You can now interact with the site. One way is to leave a comment on posts like this one to start a conversation with us or other readers of the site.
• You can stay up-to-date by subscribing to the RSS feed for blog posts or comments. This is a great way to be notified when there’s something new on the site without having to check back on your own. If you’re new to RSS, you can read more about it in plain English.
• You can easily share links to content on the site through email or social networking and bookmarking services like Facebook or Delicious. Just look for the buttons at the bottom of every page.
• The new site makes it easier to incorporate other media to support training in research methods. One example is the video tutorial series I’ve started about using MAXQDA software to manage and analyze qualitative data. We plan to add other online tutorial series in the near future.

We look forward to expanding the site in other ways, too. We plan to offer more resources for teaching and learning methods, including data sets, exercises, and bibliographies. We are also interested in collecting and sharing syllabi from courses in research methods—qualitative and quantitative alike. We want to create opportunities for people to interact on the site and are exploring the possibility of adding social networking features. For starters, participants in any of the NSF-sponsored training opportunities featured in the Methods Mall should register for an account to access course materials.

Beyond what the new site can do, the biggest change is the way it looks. It’s nice, isn’t it? Thanks to Kevin and David at rocketgenius for their excellent work—and for being a pleasure to work with. We are also grateful to the Cultural Anthropology Program at the National Science Foundation for support of the training opportunities we host here. And thanks to Alan Schultz for help in setting up the course pages.

If you’d like to comment on the site—or how we can make it better—please use the form below. We look forward to hearing from you!