I started the doctoral program at the University of Florida in 1996. I studied business in Mexico and focused on the economic powerhouse city of Monterrey. To fund my research, I taught at the Universidad de Monterrey two days a week and spent three days a week in a manufacturing company. My dissertation covered international business culture, corporate communications and borderlands theory. After graduation, I worked in usability testing, focus groups and marketing related ethnographies for a variety of Fortune 500 and dot.com start-ups. I completed more graduate coursework in marketing at Fordham University. After a year teaching marketing at Marymount Manhattan College, I joined Empire State College in 2004.
My research has moved from business culture to marketing to ethnographic field methods and now with digital communities. I am married to Matthew Tratner (ESC 2007) and have two children.
Degrees
- B.S. in Anthropology and Political Science from Macalester College
- M.A. in Latin American Studies from University of Florida
- Ph.D. in Anthropology, Latin American Business from University of Florida
Publications
- Sanjek, Roger,, and Susan W. Tratner. EFieldnotes: The Makings of Anthropology in the Digital World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
- Prince, Melvin, Chris Manolis, and Susan Tratner. "Qualitative analysis and the construction of causal models." Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal 12.2 (2009): 130-152.
- Chapter 16: Mixed Methods in Marketing Research Melvin Prince, Mark A. Davies, Chris Manolis & Susan Tratner In: Leading Edge Marketing Research: 21st-Century Tools and Practices Edited by: Robert J. Kadens, Gerald Linda & Melvin Prince