I Am A University Student Looking For Participants In My Dissertation/Thesis On Stamp Collectors!

Hi everyone,

I have been a stamp collector for a few years now, mainly focusing on Ceylon stamps. I am from the UK, I am a student at the University of Northampton and I am studying geography for my degree.

As part of my final year research/dissertation/thesis I am studying geographies of stamp collecting and how stamp collectors form their collection to fit their identity.

*** Edited by Staff - Please review the rules that you agreed to when you registered. ***

Thank you all

Please, define "geography of stamp collecting."
How do you adjust for sampling an overwhelmingly North-American biased population?




How does that relate to geography?

Lots of questions. He also stated


but apparently, he did not research the rules to the forums.
Don

Interesting questions.

To what extent do topical and specialized collections reflect and reinforce social identities? When they don't, why not?

What stamps one soaks off will reflect the geography of one's broader social networks and communication patterns. Who do you know and who do you communicate with? If you are working in a firm, who are you buying from and selling to? Who were your grandparents, more likely to have used stamps than email, communicating with?

An interesting choice for a dissertation subject - I don't recall ever coming across any academic work related specifically to links between philately and geography.

I am eager to hear more details about your work and what methodology you are using. Will it be survey-based, or are you conducting interviews? Are you looking for participants from just this forum, or from other avenues as well?

I may be interested in participating, depending on what the research consists of *** They cannot contact you until they have 50+ posts as the rules state - Mod*** .

On another note - Ceylon is of course a fascinating country to collect. Given the subject of your research, it would be interesting to hear how you chose to focus on this country.

While the extreme cynical side of me wonders if you used to be a Nigerian Prince in need of help, I too am interested in hearing more. What is your actual thesis and how do you plan to use this forum to gather the data? Where else are you collecting data points? How does a stamp collecting identity align with geography? I assume the focus is on those who collect specific countries.

You also have forum rules to work within, but I do want to see how this plays out.

- Lance

It seems some of you can't relate stamp collecting to geography. I started collecting world stamps around the age of 11 and by the time I was 13 or so I knew all the countries of the world (That issued stamps) and to this day geography is very important to me.

It seems you have only one concept of the geography of stamp collecting and jump to conclusions.
For an academic, OP did a very poor job of delimiting the subject of his thesis. Consequently, the question was what he meant.

Looking at a map to see where a stamp is from is one way. Personally, I prefer to visit places rather than gaping at a map. It, however, is difficult to understand how looking at a map relates to 'ídentity.'

This seems to assume a very traditional answer that stamp collectors collect one country or group of countries. I don't fit that mold at all.



A much better approach! This allows for a broad set of answers which is much more reflective of the diversity of collectors. I know of serious collectors who collect Disney stamps, worldwide postage due stamps, worldwide postal cards, worldwide meters, worldwide perfins, royalty on picture postcards, etc. Most collectors I know have several collecting interests - often one or more very serious collections and one or more just for fun. No constraints of geography.

I don't see a well-defined thesis statement which would be needed to start collecting meaningful data.

I wonder whether OP ever will return to the site or just 'advertised' his/her email address.




Yet, that is what they teach you to do when you are going to write a thesis.

I would consider helping with the project as I live near the student but remain unconvinced that I will be able to help.

Given the original poster broke several rules and has, has not come back since the day he posted this, and I have not seen him post the same request in other philatelic forums; I remain dubious as to his/her intentions. Folks should always use caution when being asked for ANY kind of information online no matter how good the 'story' might be.
Don

The OP also posted this request on reddit. I took a look at the survey but didn't take it.

What do you mean?
Are you studying the geographies of the collectors' locations, or the countries they collect? Doing either would still be too broad and over reaching. There are millions of geographic locations. For this to work you would need to narrow your research to comparing two or three narrowly and specifically defined geographic locations.



What do you mean by this?? What definitions/classifications are you using for identity?? I hope this was answered in the part that was edited out.

All in all, I think you need to have a long talk with your advisor.

None of it was 'answered' in the original post and given that he has not come back since his original post I cannot help but feel that this was not legitimate...locking the thread.
Don