Author Archives: Emily Hertzman

Student Life’s Strategic Plan: an Ethnography of Organizational Culture in Higher Education
Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / final papers / Undergraduate Ethnography

Student Life’s Strategic Plan: an Ethnography of Organizational Culture in Higher Education

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Final Report By Daisy Sanchez Villavicencio We have become familiar with the idea that large organizations like Universities are guided by Strategic Plans and produce annual reports. My research in the University of Toronto’s division of Student Life permitted me to examine the practices involved in this production and the rationality or mode of reasoning … Continue reading →

Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / Undergraduate Ethnography / Updates

How U of T’s Student Life drastically differs from student affairs organizations at three competing universities

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By Daisy Sanchez Villavicencio From conversations with ANT473 peers, focus groups, and friends, I have concluded that Student Life (SL) has a reputation for offering a complex range of services that can overwhelm students and deter them from accessing the support they were promised. According to an SL staff interlocutor, SL has ten units and … Continue reading →

Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / Undergraduate Ethnography / Updates

Auditing Impact at Student Life

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By Daisy Sanchez Villavicencio In the early weeks of ANT473, Professor Li assigned students  “Coercive Accountability: the rise of audit culture in higher education” by Cris Shore and Susan Wright (2003), which brought our attention to the effects of technological practices as they interact with social life and cultural change. Audit technologies, which I understand … Continue reading →

Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / Undergraduate Ethnography / Updates

Liminality within Higher Education: OISE Master’s Students Experience Contradictory Identities

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By Daisy Sanchez Villavicencio It’s 2:10 pm on a Friday and rather than finding a comfy seat in a lecture hall, I face a panel of rectangular screens with students in varying settings and others’ black/blank. Since the pandemic, I’ve attended countless online lectures and feel myself instinctually take my position as a traceless attendee … Continue reading →

Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / Undergraduate Ethnography / Updates

On Coping With Ethnographic Disappointment

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By Cameron Miranda-Radbord It is a real loss for future generations of students in ANT 473 that Professor Li is retiring, but if the course continues to be taught, I have a scintilla of what I think is wisdom: your ethnography may not be everything you hoped it was.  When I researched “anthropology disappointment” and … Continue reading →

Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / Undergraduate Ethnography / Updates

Staff Turnover

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By Cameron Miranda-Radbord What the heck happened to the staff who were supposed to conduct Signature Program Assessments? No, really – as I spoke to a Student Life staff member, I was perplexed by her explanation of why many of the Signature Program Assessments were not completed. Administrators, she told me, had moved departments. If … Continue reading →

Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / Undergraduate Ethnography / Updates

Fieldwork from above and below

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By Cameron Miranda-Radbord Walk to Simcoe Hall, arrive at 9:10am – late, because administration doesn’t function on UofT time. Listen to financial update. Ask questions. Fight a losing battle against schoolwork that could have been done last night.  I approached my ethnography of Accessibility Services from what I consider a unique standpoint – both “below” … Continue reading →

Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / final papers / Undergraduate Ethnography

“Constructing” Community and Leadership: An Ethnography of Student Clubs and ‘Third Space Professionals’ at UofT

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Final Report By Amani Hassan “Student Life”: A New Profession for a New Institutional Priority  International university ranking systems have increasingly shaped how institutions like the University of Toronto structure their priorities. Following an observed influence of student input on universities’ global ranking, a new profession emerged in many academic institutions that specifically intends to … Continue reading →

Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / Undergraduate Ethnography / Updates

Seeking Community in Normalized Isolation: A Reflection on the Importance of ‘Third Space Professionals’ in the Post-pandemic University

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By Amani Hassan ‘Student Life’ (SL) and similar student experience-focused entities in universities emerged within the last decade, partly as a response to the importance of “student experience” as a category on international rankings. However, departments such as SL’s Clubs and Leadership Development (CLD) now have an additional significance in the post-pandemic university, as they … Continue reading →

Ethnography of the University / Ethnography of the University: Focus on Student Life 2024 / Undergraduate Ethnography

Symbiotic Ethnographies: Approaching Research at Two Connected Field Sites

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By Amani Hassan Making the strange familiar and the familiar strange is central to ethnographic research. Ethnography typically involves participant observation, where the researcher immerses themself in a community to understand it from a culturally relative perspective. But how do you approach this when you are researching two groups and are also an active member … Continue reading →