The Ethnography Incubator supports the craft of ethnographic research in the social sciences. We place an emphasis on supporting students who are working on pressing issues of social inequality in the U.S. and globally.
The Incubator began in 2016 through the initiative of Kimberly Hoang, Kristen Schilt, and Forrest Stuart in the Department of Sociology. Each year, we bring a group of faculty ethnographers from across the social sciences to campus for a public discussion on the state of the field. Additionally, we put out a national call for graduate student fellows. On average, we receive about 100 applications a year and select five PhD candidates with the most innovative ethnographic projects. In an all-day closed session, student fellows receive detailed feedback on their work from the visiting fellows and from UChicago faculty. Our faculty and student fellows have come from anthropology, communication studies, education, and sociology. We also provide office space to three University of Chicago Sociology PhD students each year as Ethnography Incubator Fellows.