Spring 2015, GEOGRAPHY 7102 (#18961)

How do we generate evidence to address our research questions? What are the advantages and pitfalls of specific approaches? This course is designed to explore these and other questions relating to how we create and interpret data in/from the “field” – that complex social, environmental and political space in which we learn firsthand about the world.

Students will critique and practice interviewing, participant observation and ethnography, visual techniques, questionnaire surveys, archival research, landscape interpretation and more. We will discuss overarching themes such as reflexivity, representation, power, ethics and activism. Graduate students in any field who are planning to conduct primary research on human/social phenomena are welcome.

FIELD METHODS in human geography