schaffer_schedule


 * Schedule of Activities**

//September-December 2012//:
 * Preliminary work with Citizen’s Working Group on Composting (CWG-C) to develop report to City Council. Weekly meetings at group member’s houses, unstructured interviews with waste managers, reading reports and searching out information on extant composting systems, writing report and editing material produced by other members of the working group.
 * Preliminary literature search: debates over ecological modernization theory, social history of waste.

//January-March 2013//:
 * Participant observation with newly formed “Troy Compost” group. Involves coordinating actors, fielding questions, envisioning plans, leading discussions, maintaining a website.
 * Continued literature search on discard studies, social theory of waste, governance of waste.
 * Informal, preliminary interviews with members of Troy Compost. Particularly Abby Lublin.
 * Generate data structures for collection of data on neighborhood compost sites.

//April-May 2013//:
 * Work with Neighborhood-Scale Composting Working Group as they implement pilot piles. Includes participant observation at pilot sites, semi-structured interviews with members of coordinating group from Transition Troy, RPI, and neighborhood gardens, shorter interviews with user of each pile.
 * Continued literature search.
 * Present preliminary plans at grad student conference.
 * Poster at Rensselaer’s Earth Week Festival.
 * Meetings with community visioning groups to discuss possibility of compost mapping.
 * Discourse analysis of compost policy documents.

//June-August 2013//:
 * Continue work with coordinating groups, monitoring of compost sites.
 * Author article with Abby Kinchy on toxic waste.
 * Begin contacting industrial composting sites, compost consultants. Inquire after interviews, internships for participant observation opportunities.

//September-December 2013//:
 * Continue coordinating groups, monitoring compost sites, participant observing at meetings and conducting semi-structured interviews of participants.
 * Turn some of research into promotional materials for Troy Compost.
 * Present preliminary findings at 4S?
 * Conduct on-site interviews at Peninsula Compost facility in Delaware, BIG! NYC compost sites, Baltimore facility.
 * Continue literature search, focusing on environmental governance.

//January-May 2014//:
 * Present at American Composting Council Conference in Florida; use this opportunity for networking, collecting names for interviews.
 * While in Florida, hunt down “food cams” in Elementary School Lunchrooms. Try to score an interview! {Are we allowed to say “score” in ethnography? Or do we schedule them?}
 * Finish literature reviews.
 * Interviews with nation-wide compost coordinators.
 * Investigate mapping software?
 * Preliminary data analysis from neighborhood composting sites. Work to produce graphs that are both useless and evocative. Work to produce other graphs that can convince city council of utility of neighborhood compost sites.
 * Complete research proposal.

//June-August 2014//:
 * Participant observation at Eureka! Recycling in St. Paul, MN.
 * Begin to gather up smaller case studies on unusual trends in waste management (trash cams, bag taxes, etc) to enrich account of waste systems change.
 * Decide whether mapping projects are worthwhile or not.
 * Start working interviews with waste management officials into article for publication.
 * Make contact with Cornell compost researchers.

//September-December 2014//:
 * Present at 4S?

January-December 2015:

January-May 2016:
 * Finish dissertation