The "colloquium" sequence is conceived as a form of apprenticeship during which doctoral students are taken through all the steps that characterize professional work in anthropology: grounding themselves in a theoretical framework, elaborating a research proposal asking a concrete question that theoretical considerations suggest might be answered by anthropological techniques, conducting a eight to ten weeks pilot ethnographic investigation over the summer months, analyzing their data, and writing a research report to be defended in public.

The first semester of this sequence is given in conjunction with ITSF4011 "Social Contexts of Education."