ANT1000 - Fall 2007
Heather M.-L.
Miller, Instructor
COLLABORATIVE PROPOSAL ASSIGNMENT
For this assignment, you will
describe a proposed project that involves collaboration of some
kind. This description should be written as a summary of the
proposed project, for a grant proposal or other purposes, such as a job
application.
***I am most interested in creative
uses of collaboration to answer questions, so that is what you should
concentrate on -- your question(s) and how you will use collaboration
to address them.
Think of this as an extension of your
earlier work on grant proposal writing -- be sure to make your
questions/topics/theses clear, and be sure to indicate the importance
of the project. (In other words, why should scholars or other
people care about this research?)
I will also evaluate how clearly and
concisely you present your project.
All assignments
should be submitted as a
paper document on Friday, Dec. 7.
I will arrange to
be at St. George that day (hours and locations to be provided in Dec. 3
class), or you can put it my mailbox in the department office NO LATER THAN 4:30 pm.
You may turn the paper in on Wed.
Dec. 3 in class if you wish.
PROJECT:
--You may expand on the project
described for your grant proposal earlier in the semester, or do
something completely different. You should consider
yourself to be a starting or mid-level PhD student for the purposes of
this proposal, and keep the project at an appropriate scale (see below
for more).
--For ideas, think about the various
projects you have heard about in class, or other projects about which
you have heard or in which you have participated. Web
searches might turn up interesting types of collaborations as well.
--You will not be asked to create and
justify a budget, although I expect you to create a reasonable project,
not something that would require a significant proportion of the entire
granting agency budget.
COLLABORATORS:
--Your collaborators might be in the
same discipline (Anthropology), in the same or different
sub-disciplines, or in different disciplines. In all cases, you
will have to justify their participation, based on their background and
skills. These may be real people (including your fellow
students), or they may be people you have invented, but invented people
must have reasonable skills and background.
--You may be the primary director of
the project (in which case it should be a fairly small
project), or you may be one member of
a larger group.
If you are the primary director and
you want to include senior researchers on the project, you will have to
justify why they would be willing to work on your project -- in
other
words, try to be realistic.
You might also think about the
likelihood that your peers or junior scholars would be more willing and
more able to devote time and attention to this project, as a way to
increase their own standing and expand their research
interests. (FYI: You may not pay project
members for their participation, although you might be able to cover
their expenses in the field.)
--Your collaborators might be in the
field at the same time as you are, or you may only meet periodically to
review findings. You may share all of your results, or do
separate projects that only intersect at certain topics. You
might also discuss what will happen to the final data: Who will
take charge of project data while the project is on-going? Will
it eventually go into an archive somewhere? If you like, you can
also mention decisions about publication rights.
STRUCTURE:
--All documents should be in Arial 12
point font with 3/4" or 3 mm margins, single-spaced. The expected
length is about 5 pages, with a maximum length of 6 pages. Papers
must be in the format specified below.
I. Title
section (don't use a full
page) in the following format:
YOUR FULL NAME
PROPOSAL/PROJECT TITLE
Example:
Heather M.-L. Miller
Historic Trade and Communication
Networks between South and Central Asia
II.
Summary of Proposed Project:
Basically, an abstract that should provide an overview of the project
and its goals. This should be about one page in length.
III. Project
Participants. In a list
format, provide:
--the full names of your
collaborators;
--their affiliations; "Independent
Scholar" is fine for someone not affiliated with an organization;
--a few lines laying out their
primary background for participation in the project:
discipline, topics of specialty, skills, etc.
IV.
Detailed Description of Project.
This is the full version of your project, and should take up 3 to 4
pages; I recommend dividing the statement into the following
sub-sections, but if your proposal works better in a different format,
that is fine. Be sure to indicate the role of your
collaborators in various aspects of the work, as appropriate.
(You can refer to them by surname only, as in "Miller will be
responsible for . . ." .)
Possible Sub-sections:
Objectives; Background (or Context -- how this project fits in
the discipline/field of study); Methods (or Approach)
V.
References: You may add
additional pages for references (beyond the maximum of 6), if you
desire. An extensive bibliography is not necessary for this
assignment. You do not need to include CVs.
Remember that this is 40% of
your work for the class, so don't leave it till the last minute!