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There’s a principle that I learned in primary school maths classes which I think also belongs in research: the principle of showing my workings. “Don’t just give me the answer,” my teacher told me. “Show me how you got there. Then even if your answer is wrong, I can understand your thinking.”

With primary school maths, it was easy to show my workings. At my current level of academic writing it’s rather more complicated. As so often happens, others in my network are thinking about this at the same time as me, and Naomi Barnes aka @nomynjb published a blog post yesterday on a similar topic.

I think it is particularly important to show my workings because my next traditionally published book will be on research ethics. I have not yet come across a sole authored book on research ethics with a reflexive element. The closest I’ve found is Alice Dreger’s book Galileo’s Middle Finger, which is beautifully written, incisive, and about research ethics among other things. It is a page-turner which is very rare among research books. I want to write a book on research ethics as compelling and insightful.

Dreger shows her workings – or, as the qualitative researchers say, positions herself – throughout the book. Using a novelist’s technique, she drip-feeds the information to the reader. I’m not yet at a point where I can do that, and anyway, this is a blog, not a book. So you’re going to get the main points in a single download. Here goes.

I was born into a Catholic family. I lost my faith in my early teens, and have never got it back, though I guess one day I might reconnect with it. Or not. But I still hanker after rules and the apparent clarity they bring, and have to work to counteract my tendency to look for and follow an external imperative. I also hold many Christian values, such as valuing love, kindness, and compassion. And, like many Christians, I set myself high standards, frequently fail to meet them, and then give myself a hard time.

I was the oldest in my generation, so I’m independent, hard-headed, and intelligent. Now in my 50s, I’m beginning to feel my age, and most days there is more about that which I like than which I don’t like.

I am happily female, not very feminine, and thoroughly feminist. I can’t be bothered with make-up, hair dye, jewellery, or other trappings of femininity. I’ve never wanted to be a mother; I’ve never regretted not having children. But I am not a trans woman; I could probably claim the title ‘queer’, but have never felt the need.

I am bisexual. I have known this is what I am ever since I knew such a thing existed. It’s about who I am attracted to, not about what I do. I’m attracted to a person first, their gender second. I have always been bisexual: through times of celibacy, singledom, relationships with women or men or both. I will always be bisexual.

I am disabled, mostly invisibly. I have asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. My hands and feet are deformed but you have to look fairly closely to notice. My disabilities affect my life far more than you might guess from the outside. I have given up many things such as knitting, crochet, cycling, reading hardback books, driving long distances, DIY, gardening (these last two no hardship for me, but a bit tough on my partner). My focus, though, is not on what I can’t do, but on what I can do. And I can still do so many things that bring me joy. That’s what counts.

I am white and British. I’m not interested in genealogy, though I bet if I was, I’d find a big genetic mix in my heritage. I know that recent generations encompass English, Welsh, Irish and Scots lineages, and one side of my family has a strong suspicion of Jewish blood in there too. I have relatives buried in Wrexham churchyard; I’m entitled to wear the Sutherland tartan; and I’m told there is a community in the Mountains of Mourne with eyebrows just like mine. I like this mixing; mongrel status suits me fine. I like being indigenous – a term usually used in research to refer to people of colour, but it is what I am too. I love my country and her people: I see very many imperfections and injustices, yet overall I see more good than bad.

I have been with my partner for 20 years. He strengthens me and enhances my life. I aim, I try, to do the same for him.

I worked as a humanist funeral celebrant for 14 years, alongside my research work, from 1997 to 2011. This enhanced my understanding of grief and my appreciation of life.

There are many more workings I could show at increasing levels of granularity. But at the big picture level I think these are the key points I need to make. I want to weave these into my ethics book, to show my workings in a way that hasn’t been done before. I don’t know whether I can, but I’m going to try.

Some of the narrative may change. As an ethical researcher, I believe it is important to be open to changing, and willing to change, my mind, and to explain when and why any such change took place. So this is not a manifesto, it’s a statement of where I’m at with all this right now. (I wish our politicians could work this way – or, perhaps, that they could own up to working this way. Maybe one day.)

Traditionally, the academy has eschewed the personal. People who have tried to make explicit links between their lives, standpoints, beliefs etc and their research work have been written off as self-indulgent. Though that is not a view I hold in the abstract, I have read some work which has come across that way. And other work which has not – for me, the difference is in the analysis. Personal disclosure is all very well but there has to be a point beyond the narcissistic. In my book, I will be aiming to synthesise the data I gather from my own life with the data I gather from interviews and texts. I don’t yet know how to do this, or whether I can do it effectively, but I’m keen to find out. I want my readers to understand how I think, so they can see what has led me to any conclusions I may reach. I want to show my workings.

Forget-me-not Pond, near Calgary, Canada

I’ve just had an unforgettable couple of weeks in Canada, with lots of new experiences.

My first time in Calgary. Not a beautiful city, all grids and skyscrapers and right-angles, but the friendliest people I’ve ever met. And I loved the way that people of all races, genders, and ages met my gaze equitably, smiled, and spoke to me as an equal. I hadn’t realised how depressing I find the suspicion I often encounter in England: from older people because I’m younger, from younger people because I’m older, from non-white people because I’m white, from some women because I’m the wrong kind of woman… no-one seems to do any of that in Calgary.

My first keynote speech, at a public multi-agency conference at Calgary Public Library, on Creative Research Methods: Finding Ways To Prove Impact. I will confess to you that I was really nervous about doing a keynote, but you know what? I loved it! I was afraid I might not have enough to say, but in fact I had the opposite problem (probably no surprise to anyone who knows me in person).

My first time teaching in Canada. I taught creative research methods to staff and students at Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary. They were gratifyingly keen to engage with new ideas, ask intelligent questions, and think laterally about how they might apply different methods. And they were so welcoming! I was taken out for breakfast, coffee, lunch, dinner – and given the huge portion sizes in Canada, I’m amazed I can still fit in my trousers.

My first time falling in love with mountains. I’ve been to the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Alpujarras, the mountains of Oman and Turkey and Greece, probably others I’ve forgotten, and they’re all beautiful and amazing but I didn’t love any of them and long to return. The Rockies, though, are a whole different deal. From the way they rise out of the prairie, to their pristine air and water – I lost my heart to those magnificent mountains.

My first time in an airplane window seat. I never flew till I was in my 20s, and to my surprise I was terrified. It took me decades to get over the fear, but I’m there now; nevertheless, I always choose an aisle seat. When I’d finished work in Calgary, I flew to Vancouver Island to visit a friend for a few days. I knew the flight would take in the prairie, the mountains, and the ocean, and was only 75 minutes long, so I plucked up my courage and asked for a window seat. It was worth it, too; I spent most of my time glued to the view.

My first time hiring a car in my own name. I’ve co-hired with my partner before, but never on my own, and I was a little nervous as I’ve also never driven in Canada. However, my friend who I’m visiting doesn’t drive, the public transport on Vancouver Island is all but non-existent, and we wanted to take a little road trip. I got a free upgrade, and I think the car rental person was expecting me to be pleased, but it just made the whole thing more daunting – though it all worked out OK.

My first time driving an automatic. With push-button ignition and push-button handbrake. That took some getting used to, and I was glad of my sister’s advice to drive six times round the car park before tackling the traffic. But by the end of the trip, I was a convert, and now I want an automatic of my own.

My first time visiting Quadra Island. A friend of mine in England grew up there, and has always spoken warmly of the island, but honestly, it’s so beautiful, friendly, and relaxed. The friend I was staying with and I rented a little hobbit house right by the water’s edge, a geodesic dome with living quarters on the ground floor and an attic bedroom above, and an extension with utility room and another bedroom, and a deck reaching out over the beach with table, chairs, and gas barbecue. We spent a couple of very happy days on ‘island time’, exploring the trails through forests and by the ocean, eating yet more delicious food, reading, talking, and laughing.

And of course in the middle of all this I got last week’s astonishing news that I’ve been made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. It’s been such a high-octane fortnight that I’m not quite sure who I actually am, but I expect it will all sink in over the next few days and weeks.

This was not the post I expected to write this week. I had planned to tell you all about my experiences in Canada and my first keynote speech. But that will have to wait. Because I have astonishing news: I have been made a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

In the UK, most academic subject areas have their own Academy. Some have been around for centuries – some are even Royal Academies – and some are newer. The Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS for short) was formed in the 1970s, so it is one of the newest. Its members are learned societies, such as the Social Research Association, the Association of Social Anthropologists, and the British Psychological Society, as well as around 1,000 individual Fellows.

The individual Fellows are almost all Professors (93%), mostly male (70%), and I suspect predominantly white. The first person who explained to me about how the AcSS worked, who was a senior academic and a Fellow of the Academy, said quite matter-of-factly that it wasn’t for people like me. So when a kind Professor and Fellow I’ve been working with asked if I would like to be nominated, I said ‘no, thank you’. He gently suggested that I think about it, which I rather grumpily agreed to do, though I couldn’t really see the point. In the course of my thinking, I telephoned a colleague who is also a Fellow but not an academic, and she told me firmly that I should go for it. So I agreed to be nominated, sent the kind Professor my CV, and heard nothing further.

The selection process involves ‘a thorough process of peer review’ to assess potential Fellows for ‘the excellence and impact of their work in the social sciences’ (quote from this week’s AcSS press release). And it all happens behind closed doors. I couldn’t imagine that they would accept me as a Fellow – but they did. Apparently the AcSS send out letters to new Fellows, to notify them, before the news is released to the public. But I’ve been working in Canada for the last week so I didn’t get the letter. I did get an email to congratulate me on my ‘conferment’ and say the press release had been issued, but there wasn’t much other information, except that I was invited to the President’s lunch where I could receive my certificate. It’s not the kind of invitation I’m used to, because mostly when people invite me to lunch I don’t have to pay £85 for the privilege. EIGHTY-FIVE QUID!!! That’s a fortnight’s food budget in my life. I like eating out, and have even been known to go out for dinner with several courses and drinks on occasion, but I’ve never spent as much as £85 on one of those, let alone on a lunch. Also, I think there is more financial commitment, because there was a direct debit form with the email, but it didn’t say what for; presumably that information is in the welcome pack on my doormat at home.

I guess all those Professors have universities to pay their costs for them because of the prestige it brings. Or, if they have to pay for themselves, they’re on the kind of salary that means it’s possible to spend £85 on lunch. The average salary for a Professor in the UK is around £66,500. Over the last five years, I’ve averaged £14,000 take-home per year, which is approximately equivalent to an employed person’s salary of £16,500 – around a quarter of what a Professor earns. I can live on my income, but it doesn’t support an £85 lunch habit. Though, as a prudent businesswoman, I aim to keep 6-12 months’ running costs in my business account to protect me against lean times. So I could draw from my reserves, treat the cost as a business expense, and set it off against my tax bill. But would that be any kind of ethical?

I want to go to the lunch. I want to advocate for the value of independent researchers in social science, and it seems that eminent social scientists think I’m fit to be their representative. There aren’t many others – in fact there’s only one Fellow who describes himself as an ‘independent academic’, and he used to be a Professor. Those who are not Professors or attached to a university seem mostly to be attached to, or retired from, research organisations or Government departments. So I may be the only Fellow who is, and has been throughout my research career, completely independent of any institution.

I am truly delighted to receive this unexpected honour, but it does bring new ethical dilemmas. Even if I decide I can afford the £85 plus the train fare to Cardiff, is it ethical to spend that much on a glitzy lunch when desperate refugee people are freezing and starving at our gates, and increasing numbers of people within our borders are seeking help from food banks? Which is the greater good, me advocating for independent researchers within the Academy or my £85 providing food for those who have none?

People have begun referring to me as an ‘expert’. I feel quite uncomfortable with this for two reasons. First, I’m English, and being called an expert is complimentary, so I am culturally programmed to look at the floor, shuffle my feet, and make harrumphing noises until someone changes the subject. Second, the subject I am allegedly an expert in is research methods. This subject is colossal and I am continually aware of how small an area my expertise covers. I see questions on ResearchGate that I don’t even understand. If I’m an expert in anything, it’s something like, ‘Research methods for the social sciences, might be some use for arts and humanities too, and maybe a few people at the outer reaches of other disciplines, not all research methods though, bit rusty on the serious quant stuff, not much idea about big data, is STEAM a thing?’

I am always learning, regularly dismayed by how little I have learned in the context of how much there is to learn, and sometimes close to despair when I notice how fast the field is expanding. But I hadn’t given much thought to the question of how I learn until last week, when I was invited to participate in a methods diary circle that NCRM are running over the next couple of years to investigate how researchers learn about methods in practice. They’re using delightfully creative methods of gathering data, and welcoming images, notes, voice recordings etc as well as text – anything that can be collated and shared via WordPress.

So I started to think about how I learn, and what I might have to contribute to their research. And it swiftly dawned on me that I constantly learn about research methods as I work, building on my existing knowledge and adding to it all the time. I learn from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn; from email, Skype and hard self conversations; from reading online, on-screen, e-readers and books; from making and doing; and occasionally from more formal learning opportunities such as conferences and courses. I learn as I write, create, speak, and teach. I even learn from my own work. Sometimes I read an article, or a section of a book, that I wrote some time ago, and I learn. Maybe I re-learn something I’d forgotten, or I learn something I couldn’t know when I wrote it in the same way I can know it today with a different context of more understanding and experience.

Let’s take yesterday: not your ‘yesterday’ as you read, but mine as I write. I checked my emails first thing as usual, and there was a new blog post from Pat Thomson on insider and outsider research identity. I was interested to see that she argued, as I did in my first research methods book, that this is a spectrum rather than a dichotomy. However, I’m not at all sure I’ve learned enough about this to explain or write about it clearly or teach it well, so I was pleased to see Pat has written a paper on it with Helen Gunter, and I bookmarked the paper for future reading.

Then I logged on to Twitter to let others know about Pat’s post and paper, and picked up a link from the #acwri hashtag to another post on the Savage Minds blog. I was interested in this because it’s about impostor syndrome, something I experience regularly and have written about myself. It led me to another post by Galen Strawson which offers some very interesting ideas about the relationship between narrative and identity. Broadly, the ‘narrativists’ (humanities people, person-centred psychology types, etc) think that narration is part of the self, while the opposing view is that people are ‘anti-narrative’, partly because we can’t remember our lives in a narrative-friendly coherent and linear way, and partly because life in general isn’t shaped like a story but is chaotic and shambolic. Strawson’s conclusion is that some people are inclined to narrative but most are not, though narrative can be useful in some circumstances even for those who are not natural narrativists. I am certainly a narrativist and have not given enough thought to those who are not. Yet this has implications for interviewing. Are other narrativists more likely to agree to take part in research interviews? How might this skew our data? Should we amend the method to make it more non-narrative friendly? Is that even possible? Does enhanced interviewing help?

This was timely as I was about to embark on a new set of interviews for a commissioned research project. My mind was buzzing with these questions and ideas as I drove off to do my first interview in the series. At the planning meeting, staff of the service had asked whether I could email a photo of myself so they could print it out and give it to participants whose homes I would be visiting. Yes, I said, of course I can, what a great idea. (I am now incredulous that I didn’t think of this for myself long ago.) Today’s participant is undergoing medical treatment with various side-effects including confusion and memory problems. When I arrived at his home, he showed me the printed-out photo of myself and told me how useful it had been for him. So I learned, in a different way, from a different angle, that this really is a good idea, and resolved to embed it in my research practice from now on.

Then I came back to my office to do some work on the slides for a keynote speech on creative research methods that I’ll be giving in Calgary next month. I am not a very visual person and have struggled with PowerPoint, but recently I had an excellent tutorial from a young friend which has increased my confidence. She showed me how to remove the backgrounds of images so that they stand out by themselves without being framed. I hadn’t tried that yet, so I had a go, and learned that although it’s fiddly, I can do it. Hurrah!

Then I did some background reading for my next full-length book which will be on research ethics. I have never been able to separate ethics from method; for me, ethics is not about filling in a form and ticking boxes, it’s about treating people with respect and care throughout the process, and using research for social justice. I read the first edition of Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith in 2000, and am enjoying the second edition, with its new foreword and two new chapters. On page 203, I find: ‘…if they are to work, to be effective, political projects must also touch on, appeal to, make space for, and release forces that are creative and imaginative.’ This resonates with me. I have long argued that all research is a political act – even choosing not to do research is a political decision – and I’ve written a whole book arguing for creativity in research, which also demonstrated the importance of imagination. But Smith’s statement is strong and differently angled. Perhaps I didn’t go far enough. What would be the implications for research methods, if we didn’t only make space for, but actually privileged, the creative and the imaginative? How could we release the forces that Smith refers to? What would happen if we not only valued creativity within research, but also used research to help fulfil our creative and imaginative potential?

I’m glad it’s lunchtime, so I can spend time thinking this over while I make and eat some food…

Do you remember the diary circle I mentioned? I have said ‘no’ to participating (although if you’d like to say ‘yes’, I bet they’d love to have you). I would like to help with the research but I simply can’t commit to recording everything I learn for two whole years. The morning described above is fairly typical. Of course there are days where I don’t learn anything – but they really are quite rare. Independent workers either quickly learn to make fairly accurate estimates of how long work will take them, or go out of business. I estimated that it would take me an average 15-30 minutes per day to record my learning, which would equate to around a working month over the two years. That’s unpaid work I can’t afford to take on. I already knew that recruitment and retention of participants is a problem in longitudinal research, where there is almost inevitably more to be gained by researchers than participants. It is interesting to have the opportunity to think this through as a potential participant. As a result, I’m learning about it from a different angle, which is useful as I’m preparing to work on a longitudinal project myself. As I may have mentioned, the learning never stops!