Social Fieldwork Teams

Cooperative social fieldwork research teams emerge informally through practice and experience. Social fieldwork teams are comprised of locals and professionals supporting research in their place-based communities. The focus of research is to support good decisions on issues urgent or long term.

Social fieldwork is a set of research methods in which local people inform through the lens of first-hand experience. In our project, local people are encoruaged to develop expertise and authority sufficient to ensure tractable action in addressing climate change, food supply, housing and more.

The Institute provides resources for research teams to directly support local communities from the ground up. Teams work with people in a range of settings. Research is begins with who shows up to community forums (similar to a focus group but ongoing). With time and training, we organize local people as researchers to conduct research with people side-by-side in everyday life.

Economics for Peace Institute focuses participatory research – social fieldwork – on the key question of sustainability. Participatory research may be applied to inform policy and programming.

To ensure economic development moves towards social equity and sustainability, we focus our research on locally-derived, baseline indicators of community well-being and ecosystem stewardship.

The Guild for Social Fieldwork is a more formal cooperative of researchers who exchange best practice and build the field.

It’s time to set the course for our better futures. You can take part in a team of local researchers who make sure that all voices are heard.


Learning and Practice

Economics for Peace Institute provides training to locals and supports them with resources and follow up. The Institute offers social fieldwork training at a discount to | epi | Associates and on an as-needed sliding scale basis. We also provide a fee for service series for planners and electeds.

We also work with interns. The Institute encourages work life experience in direct one-on-one training. We hope to make this one-on-one time a model for direct instruction and guidance by Guild members in other areas of the country.

  • Small groups are more fun and rewarding ideally with two to four people.
  • Specifically, Myriem, the | epi | founder, is willing to work directly with and train local people in the Seattle area who have the time to dedicate at a minimum of three hours for each one hour that the founder spends in their training and instruction. We’ll not quibble, but it must help build the organization.

As we grow the Guild, and this early practice of one-on-one information sharing grows to other Guild members, the arrangement must be satisfying for the other Guild members. We envision this approach to be sustainable and generate good results for all.

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