|
|
|
September 2008
GW Institute Receives Grant for Innovative Archival Research Seminar
BY JULIA PARMLEY Archival research is conducted around the world, and the best training happens in Washington, D.C., at GW’s Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies in the Elliott School of International Affairs. The institute has been awarded a three-year, $330,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help fund its Summer Institute on Conducting Archival Research (SICAR), a five-day seminar that trains doctoral students in archival research. Twenty-three students from universities across the United States and the world, including Ireland, Montenegro, and China, came to GW this summer to attend the seminar, held June 16-20. Hope Harrison, institute director and associate professor of history and international affairs, says SICAR was created in 2003 to address the growing need for archival training, a long and often arduous research process that is typically conducted internationally. “Any graduate student writing a dissertation on contemporary history has to do archival research and needs to be trained,” says Harrison. “No other university in the country that we know of trains students in archival research. The seminar meets a unique need for doctoral education.” SICAR participants undergo intensive daylong training on archival research methods and listen to speakers from the university and visiting experts on how to properly conduct research on different topics and use or request certain documents. SICAR faculty members also help participants identity new archives and sources for their dissertations. Harrison says the Mellon Foundation grant will bring more experts to SICAR and help fund the participants’ room and board. The grant also will help fund smaller day workshops throughout the year, as well as a doctoral fellow, Carolyne Davidson from Yale University. Davidson, who is currently a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, was selected out of a national search. “Emphasis on archival researching is really close to my heart, so I’m excited to be involved with SICAR and Hope Harrison,” says Davidson, a native of Scotland. “I am very happy to be completing my dissertation at GW.”
|
|
||
