Dr. Mellisa Holtzman
<b>Department: </b>Anthropology and Sociology<br><b>Research Area: </b>sexual violence prevention, family, gender, qualitative methods, archival data<br>
Department: Anthropology and Sociology
Research Focus: sexual violence prevention, family, gender, qualitative methods, archival data
Potential Student Project(s): I'm happy to work with students who have an idea related to topics common within sociology: inequality, family, deviance, law, media, socialization, education, an so forth. My current research is on sexual violence prevention but I also have a background in family sociology, family law, and educational research. Students need not pick a topic aligned with my research interests, though; I'm happy to work with students on other topics. I specialize in qualitative research methods – that means working with archival documents like blog posts, letters, diaries, newspaper articles, interview transcripts, and so forth. I'm less interested in quantitative methods (statistics, survey data, etc.).
As noted, the project topic for the T-S program can vary based on the student's interests.
Attributes/skills/background sought in undergraduate: Creative, inquisitive, willing to learn, strong follow-through.
Mentoring Plan: The student researcher will work 5 hours per week on a project of their choosing. At least one of those hours each week will involve a 1-on-1 meeting with me. The mentoring plan will be determined in more detail, depending on the student's project, but it could look something like this:
Assuming the project starts approximately 5 weeks after the semester starts (given the application deadline for students) and involves learning the literature on a topic the student has chosen…
Week 1 = refining and narrowly defining the project
Week 2 = learning how to find scientific literature in one's area of interest; locating 1 or 2 promising articles
Week 3 = learning how to read scientific articles
Weeks 4-6 = deep dive into the literature (searching, reading, summarizing)
Weeks 7-8 = learning how to synthesize the literature, find patterns, and identify a research gap
Weeks 9-10 = writing a literature review based on all the information collected in the previous weeks
Contact: 285-5253, Burkhardt 313