Dr. Robert Phillips
<b>Department: </b>Anthropology<br><b>Research Area: </b>I am exploring the naturalistic use of medicinal fungi and plants and their potential—whether intentional or not—to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. This work focuses on psychedelic substances such as psilocybin, mescaline, peyote, and iboga.<br>
Department: Anthropology
Research Focus: I am exploring the naturalistic use of medicinal fungi and plants and their potential—whether intentional or not—to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. This work focuses on psychedelic substances such as psilocybin, mescaline, peyote, and iboga.
Potential Student Project(s): Potential projects include:
1. learning how to interpret survey data and conduct 1-on-1 interviews on sensitive topics;
2. transcribing interviews (some transcription is automated); creating code books for data obtained from transcripts;
3. creating a corpus of text relating to the project and then using software for linguistic analysis;
4. academic skills prep - contributing to the writing of peer-reviewed articles and grants;
5. something else that the student thinks of that moves the project forward.
Attributes/skills/background sought in undergraduate:
1. Curiosity! This project involves medicinal plants and fungi, religious and cultural healing rituals, and healing trauma - I would like to have a student who is excited about these types of phenomena.
2. The ability to write well is desirable.
3. No specific background in terms of major.
Mentoring Plan: Though much of the work can be done remotely, I would like to meet 1-on-1 at least once a week, in person if possible, as well as maintain frequent communication. I want to provide the student with a solid foundation in terms of how projects develop, get funded, are conducted, produce articles, etc. The student will work 5 hours per week on the project including one hour of a weekly meeting with me.
Contact: 765-285-7512, 315 Burkhardt