In The Ethnographer's Way: A Handbook for Multidimensional Research Design (Duke University Press), UC Irvine anthropologists Kristin Peterson and Valerie Olson present a new framework for research design, from beginning idea generation to completing a research proposal. The work was recently named among The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Best Scholarly Books of 2024, joining 11 other titles published throughout the calendar year that "thrilled, surprised, challenged, and delighted" reviewers.

In its review, The Chronicle spotlighted the book’s unconventionality, saying, “It eschews a linear, hierarchically constructed style of formulating ‘scientific’ research proposals and encourages a collective, creative, and conceptual approach to research design that pushes back against the demands of the neoliberal university and the idea of the ‘lone, isolated anthropologist.’”

Read on for a Q&A with Peterson and Olson in which they share how "multidimensioning” - putting together multiple aspects of a research interest - can help ethnographers and other interdisciplinary researchers integrate various processes, people, locations, and other social elements into a cohesive, dynamic project: www.socsci.uci.edu/newsevents/news/2024/2024-07-02-the-ethnographers-way