Graduate Education Grounded in Community-Based Participatory Research

Abstract

Research projects at the University of Arizona's Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) have provided graduate students an opportunity to engage in anthropological inquiry and application, often in teams, and with guidance from experienced researchers. In this paper, we focus on our experiences as graduate students working on two community-based environmental anthropology research projects in the sister cities of Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona (known collectively as Ambos Nogales). In choosing to participate in these projects, we hoped to develop our skills with specific anthropological research methods (interviews, participant-observation, surveys, focus groups, and the writing of field notes), gain experience with a community-based participatory research (CBPR) model (including strategies for prioritizing community decision-making and incorporating local knowledge and interests throughout the research process), improve our Spanish skills, and learn to integrate research and action in a mutually-enriching way. Of course, having a job that reduced the cost of school was beneficial, but our main goal was to become anthropologists capable of contributing to academic, policy, and community-based action.