Hailey Biscow’s Summer of ’16 Anthropology Research for Colgate

        This summer I contributed to Professor Elana Shever’s research investigating people’s engagements with and interpretations of dinosaurs. Professor Shever’s research project more broadly is examining dinosaurs in an attempt to understand how public scientific knowledge is created within the contemporary United States. Angie Smith’17 and I helped Professor Shever for 8 weeks this summer specifically concentrating on data collection and analysis from sites in Colorado. I was very fortunate to spend 2 out of my 8 weeks doing ethnographic fieldwork in Colorado at various sites featuring dinosaurs. I conducted oral surveys and practiced participant observation during various tours, exhibits, and activities offered at these places. I spent the other 6 weeks at Colgate transcribing the recordings I had taken in Colorado, transcribing and summarizing interviews conducted by Professor Shever, and finally coding the collected information in a qualitative data analysis program called MAXQDA.