Build Your Research

Start With a Question.
We Help You Build the Project.

You do not need to arrive at I.F.S. with a finished research project. Some students come with a clear question they have been thinking about for years. Others arrive with an academic interest, a professional goal, or simply something they want to understand better.

We work with you to turn that interest into a researchable question and then into an actual ethnographic project.

Your project can grow out of anthropology, medicine, public health, biology, psychology, sociology, education, environmental studies, business, political science, migration studies, or another field. What matters is that the question involves people, relationships, institutions, behavior, experience, or the social world in which a problem takes place.


Research Begins Before You Arrive

IFS research does not begin when you step off the ferry. Students begin working remotely before the field period, developing their research questions, learning ethnographic methods, reviewing existing scholarship, considering ethics, and working directly with faculty. By the time you enter the field, you should already understand what you are trying to learn and why it matters.


Choose the Level of Field Participation That Works for You

Not every researcher needs to spend the same amount of time on Isla Mujeres.

Full Field Research — Six Weeks on Isla Mujeres
Spend the full field period conducting intensive ethnographic research in the community. This is the strongest option for students developing substantial independent projects or seeking extensive field experience.

Flexable Field Research — Approximately Three Weeks on Isla Mujeres
Students who cannot remain for the full six weeks may use a shorter period in the field—often around three weeks, but sometimes two, four, or another period appropriate to the research and the student’s logistics. The project can begin remotely before arrival and continue afterward, allowing time on Isla Mujeres to focus on the research that genuinely requires physical presence.

Remote Research
Some projects can be completed without traveling to Isla Mujeres. Remote researchers can participate in project development, literature and document research, remote interviewing when appropriate, data organization, coding, analysis, team meetings, and writing. Remote participation depends on whether the research question can genuinely be answered without sustained physical presence in the field.

 

A Principal Investigator may also lead a project remotely, working with Research Associates on Isla Mujeres when particular forms of data collection require an on-island presence.

The amount of time you spend on Isla Mujeres is a research design and logistical decision—not a ranking of students or projects.


Lead Your Own Project

Students working as Principal Investigators (PIs) develop and take primary responsibility for their own research.

You will work closely with faculty to refine the research question, develop a feasible design, address research ethics, identify appropriate methods, collect and manage data, analyze what you find, and develop the project into a serious academic or professional product.

You are not simply completing an assignment created by an instructor. It is your research question and your project, supported by intensive mentorship.


Join an Existing Project

You do not have to create your own project.

Students may participate as Research Associates (RAs) on active IFS research. This allows you to learn ethnographic research by contributing to a larger project while gaining experience with interviewing, participant observation, fieldnotes, ethics, data organization, analysis, and collaborative research.

Research Associates are not passive assistants. They contribute observations, ideas, evidence, interpretation, and fieldwork that can directly shape the direction of the project.


PI and RA Roles Can Overlap

These are research roles, not rigid tracks.

A student leading an independent project may also contribute to another research team. A Research Associate may develop a smaller independent question from work that emerges in the field. Projects often change as researchers encounter new people, information, opportunities, and problems.

That adaptability is part of real research.


Isla Mujeres Is the Field, Not the Topic

Studying on Isla Mujeres does not mean that your project has to be about tourism or Mexican culture.

The island is a complex community where questions about health, family, migration, business, fishing, conservation, education, government, inequality, transportation, housing, development, environment, identity, and tourism intersect every day.

A biological question about sea turtle conservation, for example, can quickly become a question about fishing, family economics, environmental policy, tourism, and competing ideas about conservation.

A public-health question may become a question about trust, transportation, family networks, access to care, or institutional barriers.

That is where ethnography becomes powerful: it allows you to investigate what happens when a disciplinary problem enters the human world.

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Practice With Real Research Standards

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IFS research development is designed around real-world anthropological practice. When students develop research proposals, they use the structure and expectations of the Wenner-Gren Foundation’s Dissertation Fieldwork Grant application as a professional model. The purpose is not to simulate a grant application for its own sake, but to practice defining a research problem, explaining its significance, developing appropriate methods, addressing feasibility and ethics, and positioning a project within existing anthropological scholarship. The Wenner-Gren application specifically asks applicants to articulate a focused research question, explain how the project enters existing scholarly conversations, justify methods, demonstrate feasibility, and address alternative research plans. Wenner-Gren Foundation

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The same principle applies to writing. Students identify an appropriate peer-reviewed journal or other scholarly publication venue and use that journal’s actual author guidelines, structure, citation style, and expectations as a model for developing their final paper.

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But the journal choice is about more than formatting. It asks a fundamental research question: Who is your audience? Who needs to read this work? What scholarly or applied conversation is it entering? What do you want readers to understand, reconsider, or perhaps do because the findings have been communicated?

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By selecting a real publication venue, students begin writing with an audience and purpose in mind. They are not producing a paper merely to satisfy a course requirement. They are entering the conversation as professional researchers.

The objective is not simulation for its own sake. It is practice participating in the professional structures through which research is proposed, funded, evaluated, communicated, debated, and put to use.

Learn Research by Doing Research

Throughout the project you will develop practical experience with ethnographic methods including interviewing, participant observation, fieldnotes, research ethics, qualitative analysis, evidence synthesis, and adapting a research design as conditions change.

But the goal is larger than learning a collection of methods.

You are learning how to move from a question, to evidence, to interpretation, and ultimately to something worth communicating to other people.


What Happens After the Field?

The research does not end when the field period ends.

Students continue working with their material through analysis, writing, presentation, and—when the project supports it—publication.

For some students, the result may become a senior thesis, graduate-school writing sample, conference presentation, publication, professional portfolio piece, or the beginning of a longer research program.


Bring the Question. Build the Project.

You do not need to know exactly what your research will become before you begin.

That is part of the reason you come to I.F.S.