Short-term job opportunity for a Ronin Anthropologist

So, on my recent visit to the Colorado School of Mines, one of the people I got to meet was David Muñoz, who recently retired as a professor there. He has started a cool initiative that he calls “Humanitarian Engineering.” I will write more about it when I understand it better, but, briefly, he wants to instill a …

Ronin Institute at the Colorado School of Mines

So, tomorrow (Tuesday, February 28), I will be speaking at The Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO about the Ronin Institute. I’ll talk about my own motivations for founding the Institute, the need for independent scholarship, and the potential future for institutes like this one. If you’re in the area, c’mon down! (Or, up, …

The Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship Incorporated

So, here’s an update for you on the development of the Ronin Institute. I’ve written about the concept and motivation for Ronin previously (e.g., here, here, and here). Briefly, the goal is to establish an institute to support scholarly research outside of the traditional (university / government lab / research institute) environment. Well, the Ronin …

On Ronin and the Importance of Physical Colleagues

Originally posted at Lost in Transcription on December 12, 2011. So, welcome back to my intermittent live-blog of my adventures in forming a non-profit research institute in order to function as an independent scholar. I’ve written a couple of times before: about my own goals for the enterprise, and about the things that an independent scholar will …

Universities as Resource Aggregators

This was originally posted at Lost in Transcription on October 26, 2011. So, I had not realized until I got a twitter-prompt from Kiona Strickland that so much time had passed since I put out my call for opinions on what one would need to successfully do academic research outside the confines of traditional academia. The call was put …

My Goals for Independent Scholarship

This was posted at Lost in Transcription originally on August 22, 2011. So, I’ve already received a number of very thoughtful responses to my previous post, in which I asked for people’s thoughts about the needs of an independent scholar — particularly those needs that could potentially be filled by an outfit like the Ronin Institute. …

Welcome to the Ronin Blog

Welcome! You’ve stumbled across the launch of the good ship Ronin Blog, the official blog of the Ronin Institute. Updates here will cover developments at the Ronin Institute, as well as topics of potential interest to independent scholars everywhere – or anyone who has ever thought/dreamed about pursuing research outside of the confines of the …