I’m in DC this week doing follow-up research on St. E’s at NARA.

The Social and Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board (SBS-IRB) at the University of Chicago has approved the study design for my boarding school case study. In addition to various institutional records on student behavior, the data for my case will be generated from a social network survey instrument, non-participant observation, and interviews of students and staff. Hooray data!

Wonderful news! The Social Science Division at the University of Chicago has awarded me two grants, one to write up my research at St. E’s over the summer and another, larger grant to fund all the costs associated with my on-going dissertation research.

I’ve been awarded a grant to visit the National Archives in Washington, D.C. for a week in March. I’ll be researching my asylum case study, and more specifically, combing through the records of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital during the early 20th century.

I’ll be in Boston next week, Oct. 15-20, collecting data for the first case study of my dissertation. Five days of combing through various archives and interviewing interesting people — should be wonderful!

I’ll be defending my dissertation proposal at 2pm this Friday, May 25. The working title of the dissertation is “On Self-Governance: Participation, Voice, and Resistance in Asylums, Prisons, and Schools.” Wish me luck!

Good news: the department is sending me to the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR) this summer for additional methods training.

I’ll be presenting a draft of my dissertation prospectus (“Organizing Voice”) at the Political Theory Workshop on Dec. 5. If you’re available, please attend! I’d love to hear from you.