CEEL Predoctoral Opportunities

Predoctoral Traineeship Program in the Ethnography of Everyday Life at Michigan

The researchers at Michigan's Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life are united by their conviction that Americans live today at a watershed in our understandings of work and family as key cultural symbols and anchors of personal identity. A full exploration of these changes requires ethnographic and documentary approaches that can both complement and go beyond the statistics and abstractions of social science. Our aim is to enter both scholarly and popular conversations about working families by focusing on the immediacy and concreteness of people's everyday lives.

The predoctoral fellowship program offers the opportunity for formal and informal training and independent ethnographic field research within a larger framework designed to investigate these changes in a variety of community and work settings. Center activities are concerned with ethnographic investigations into the changing meanings of work and family as cultural categories; with the processes of stress and reconfiguration of meanings created by increasing divergence between behavior and older cultural models; with new behaviors emerging in workplace and home in response to these changes; and with the notions of character, the good life, and individual identity that underlie people's grappling with these changes.

Graduate students participating in the program will be enrolled in an affiliated graduate degree program at the University of Michigan. These include, but are not confined to, Anthropology, Economics, Organizational Behavior, Psychology, Social Work, and Sociology. Funding will involve work with a faculty mentor affiliated with the Center who shares significant research interests with the student. Important to participation in the Center's predoctoral program is a commitment to ethnographic and documentary modes of research and presentation.

Predoctoral Program Benefits

The predoctoral program is designed as a twelve month research fellowship (with the possibility of renewal for one to two additional years subject to acceptable degree and research progress) and offers participants:

tuition support and medical benefits at levels commensurate with a fractional Graduate Student Research Assistantship.
opportunities to conduct independent ethnographic fieldwork within a larger research framework in collaboration with a community of experienced researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and other predoctoral trainees.
opportunities for collaborative research and writing with faculty mentors.
coursework and regular seminars on work/family and associated cultural issues.
opportunities for specialized training in ethnographic techniques in complex societies.
travel support for participation in national and international meetings on family and work related issues.
summer support for research and training.

Program Structure

The Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life will accept predoctoral trainees as funds permit in a given year. Funding is awarded for 12 months and includes regular academic year tuition and summer support. Applications are invited from candidates at all predoctoral levels who are interested in pursuing ethnographic approaches, with a strong commitment to the overlap with documentary, to issues related to the intersection of work and family and who are pursuing graduate training in anthropology, business administration, economics, human development, industrial and labor relations, psychology, sociology, and related fields. Candidates whose dissertation plans include a significant ethnographic component are encouraged to apply. The focus of the fellowships is on the ethnography of everyday life as it connects with American family and work cultures. Among the orienting themes for research are: (1) Cultures of identity: Negotiating definitions of work, family, and person; (2) Cultures of obligation across generations; (3) Socialization within shifting contexts of work, family, and person; (4) Civic and religious cultures in a world of working families.

Each fellow will be awarded an initial 12 month award with a strong presumption that a further award will be made subject to acceptable participation in earlier periods. The maximum continuing award of 36 months is expected to be combined with other sources of departmental support such as teaching fellowships (Graduate Student Instructorships) to accelerate progress toward the graduate degree. A typical sequence of progress would include one year of funding prior to preliminary exams in the candidate's discipline, one year of funding during ethnographic fieldwork, and one year of funding for writing the dissertation. Fieldwork funding is contingent on Center approval of the dissertation research proposal, which must address core center themes. Candidates must be accepted into a Center-affiliated Ph.D. program before beginning the fellowship and must have research interests that will involve them in ethnographic and documentary investigations of issues related to the interface between work and family cultures in the United States. Although the fellow's ethnographic fieldwork will be independent, it must fit within a broader research framework designed to explore different aspects of change in the cultural definitions of work and family at different places within the Midwestern United States.

Each fellow, in consultation with the program director, will design a program that fits her or his needs and interests within the larger framework. In addition, during fellowship periods apart from actual ethnographic fieldwork, all fellows will participate in

required ethnographic methods and substantive courses taught by Center faculty.
the regular Center seminar series devoted to culture and work/family issues.
a regular research practicum designed to bring together faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and predoctoral trainees for discussion of field research plans and findings.
Center sponsored seminars and conferences.
preparing papers for presentation at professional meetings and for submission to academic journals.

Program Requirements

Candidates accepted for Center predoctoral fellowships will be expected to:

participate in research activities in association with a primary mentor who is a Center affiliate.
participate in Center and training activities with the goal of conducting a field ethnography relating to work and family issues within the larger framework of the Center's research program; these ethnographies will be the fellow's independent enterprise but will be pursued in consultation with other Center researchers working on similar themes.
participate as representatives of the Center in seminars, colloquia, and conferences, including making at least one formal presentation for each year of fellowship support after the first year.
complete a thesis based on ethnographic work conducted through the Center.

Wider Research Links and Opportunities

Center faculty are affiliated with numerous departments and colleges throughout the University of Michigan including anthropology, economics, psychology, and sociology, the School of Business Administration, the School of Social Work, and the Institute for Social Research, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Population Studies Center. The center is directed by Tom Fricke of the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for Social Research. Predoctoral fellows have the opportunity to participate in ongoing research initiatives through links with faculty at all of these locations.

Application Requirements

Applications for predoctoral fellowships are available through the center. In addition, the candidate must apply to a relevant departmental graduate program (such as anthropology, sociology, etc.). Information for these must be obtained from the University's Rackham Graduate School and the intended department of graduate study. (Some relevant department webpages are available from our links menu.) Center fellowships include a stipend and full graduate student benefits for each year of fellowship and office space within the center. Screening of applications to occur on a rolling basis until positions are filled.

Please send (by regular mail) letter of inquiry including curriculum vitae, brief statement of research interests, and a completed application form (available through the Center). In addition, two letters of recommendation from faculty members familiar with the student's interests and abilities must be submitted.

Please send letters to:

Tom Fricke
Director, Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life
Institute for Social Research
426 Thompson Street
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor MI 48106-1248.