Students group meeting 2023-11-06

DFM Students Group

Meeting Minutes

DFM students group meeting

November 6, 2023

Discussions and decisions:

Ishan Khot: If the students share their experiences with the candidacy examination and fieldwork challenges and how they navigate those challenges will be beneficial for all of us.

Sharmin Afrose: Sharing experiences will be helpful. I also propose initiating an academic writing group. We also need to decide about the frequency of the meetings, how often the students like to meet?

Kevin Edbert: Everyone’s ethnographic experience is unique, therefore, sharing our ethnographic experience could be a good idea. How is the ethnographic experience going – reflections on what we are learning? Comparison between field experiences and how did you address field problems?

Many of us are currently in the field and will start data analysis sometime soon; a data analysis session would benefit us all.

Collen Cranmer: I liked Sharmin’s idea of the writing group and will be happy to join and lead the group. We also could share our ethnographic experiences. However, we need to think about the meeting timing.

Uon Sokmoly: Sharing ethnographic experiences and a data analysis session could be a starting point for the student group meeting. I would love to share my experience to help avoid problems in field.

Ishan Khot: As a cross-cutting theme, we should talk about the mental health of graduate students. It’s a critical time for any students who go through ups and downs; sharing experiences on how to deal with those can be beneficial in my opinion.

Aklima Akter: Sharing field experiences is a good idea. We can also think about sessions on proposal writing.

Kevin Edbert: Besides this formal group meeting, we can have informal chatting group among the DFM students, e.g., WhatsApp group.

Sharmin Afrose: Another thought we can think of is public speaking; we can have sessions on effective public speaking. Also, we can share interesting reading; if anyone of us read something interesting and find it worth sharing, we can share it in the group.

Kevin Edbert: The informal meeting like WhatsApp group meetings can take place twice a week or even weekly.

Tanzina Nazia: We can have thematic session. Also, I suggest tagging students with their interested DFM broader working groups.

Samia Sobhan: DFM can assist students attending conferences to present their research. I need DFM central support logging into the DFM Wiki account.

Derek Johnson: DFM will be happy to support organizing the Mental Health Session; could hire an expert to conduct the session.  It's good to have tangible outcomes for the student group, possibly a conference paper or panel or writing output, such as co-writing papers. Students can contribute to DFM’s public outreach by contributing photographs, videos, and stories from their research.

Group members can share their plans and thoughts for the next DFM plenary meeting.

Mahfuzar Rahman will share the meeting outcomes and the group’s plans in the plenary meeting and others will assist him.

Ideas for upcoming meetings:

·       Research sharing

·       Theme-based sessions

·       Career talks

·       Data analysis – QDA session – get Eric Thrift to lead the session

·       Alumni discussions

·       Guest speakers

Practical goals of the student group

·       Photo essays

·       Blog posts

·       Conference panels

·       Publications

·       Test presentations