no topic
JH met with Peter on 4/30/24. He has no idea what topic he is interested in, but he is interested in quantitative analysis and GIS. He is doing a summer internship in Western Mass for a consulting firm, and he will be doing field work and mapping recreation facilities to create a public website. He is going to talk with professionals he encounters in the internship about research possibilities. We discussed what makes a good topic, thinking about what place or places you want to study, and thinking about different kinds of methods and time periods. He said he wants to be ready with a clear direction before the semester starts. I told him top email me or we could set up a Zoom over the summer if there's anything he wants to noodle.
Peter reached out to JH the week of 8/5, and we met over Zoom. Peter still has no idea of topic (or rather, many ideas of possible topics). We discussed some of his ideas (related to transportation, transit, runners in the city, public space). We discussed different approaches in terms of methods, and he thinks he might want to do some kind of case study. I gave him some direction in searching for readings, and he said he would poke around and contact me again when he has a better sense of topic.
JH met with Peter again on 8/20. He wants to do a case study of the Berkshires local currency program. We talked about the difference between doing a single case study versus a comparative case study and the possible sources for case study material and how that affects the research design and work needed (documents vs interviewing people). Between 8/20 and the start of class, he is going to try to identify the kinds of questions he's interested in, do some more background reading on local currency programs, and think about the research design questions (single case vs comparative case; documents vs interviews).