01/10/2026
19th CIFAS Field School in Ethnographic Research Methods in New York City (also online)
The Comitas Institute for Anthropological Study (CIFAS) is pleased to announce the 19th CIFAS Field School in Ethnographic Research Methods. The course will be offered face-to-face in New York City in July and online on two different dates.
- On-site in New York City: classes will meet on Columbia University's campus from July 20 to 31 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. EDT.
- Online, group 1 (April): classes will meet on April 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, 28, 30, and May 5 and 7 from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. EDT time.
- Online, group 2 (August): classes will meet on August 18, 20, 25, 27, and September 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, and 17 from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. EDT time.
The Field School aims to offer training in the foundations and practice of ethnographic methods. The faculty works closely with participants to identify the required field methods needed to address their academic or professional needs. The Field School is suitable for graduate and undergraduate students in social sciences and other fields of study that use qualitative approaches (such as education, communication, cultural studies, health, social work, human ecology, development studies, and consumer behavior, among others), applied social scientists, professionals, and researchers who have an interest in learning more about ethnographic methods and their applications.
Program:
o Foundations of ethnographic research
o Ethics in fieldwork
o Theory and practice: social theories in the field
o Feminist, multi-species, and decolonial perspectives
o Action research, multimodal research, and co-production
o Research design
o Data generation techniques
o Planning the logistics of field research
o Risks in the field
o Digital ethnography
o Ethnography in interface with Social Network Analysis and other trends in the field of the digital humanities
o Ethnography in specific fields of activity (applied social sciences, health, social service, environmental studies, public policy design, business, and others)
o Principles of organization and indexation of field data
o Analyzing field data; qualitative analysis software packages: basic principles
The course's total workload is 30 hours. In this edition of the summer school, the option of earning credits is not available.
Places are limited. The tuition fee is US$1,700. Comitas Field School Fellowship: A limited number of fellowships are available to students from underrepresented minorities and low-income countries.
The application should be completed online at https://www.cifas.us/field-school/field-school. For more information, please email us at [email protected].
