The North Dakota Man Camp Project

The Man Camp Project is a research initiative headquartered at the University of North Dakota and coordinated by Bret Weber and Bill Caraher. As their idea for the project developed, they involved a impressive roster of scholars composing a multi-disciplinary, inter-institutional research team. The primary, declared aim of the Man Camp Project is "to document the material and social environment of the man or crew camps associated with the Bakken Oil Patch in western North Dakota." Field activities include interviewing, photography, video recording, measurement, sketching, and other methods common to social research and architectural documentation.

Documentation, when conducted by scholars, and when pursued from the standpoint of the humanities, leads to questions, reflections, interpretations, insights, and more questions. The North Dakota Man Camp Project has reached the point in development when it is ready to share findings with the public and engage in conversations to generate more questions and more insights. This is what has led to the Man Camp Dialogues, funded by the North Dakota Humanities Council.