Author: Helen Kara

Ten Top Tips for Successful Collaboration

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collaborationWorking in collaboration with others can be a wonderful experience. Writing a journal article with a colleague, or working in a research team with people from other organisations, can be life-enhancing. Ideas build on ideas; tasks are allocated according to people’s strengths and abilities; the results are loads better than anything you could achieve alone.

Collaborative working can also be a monumental pain in the neck. Misunderstandings, missed deadlines, and poor communication can sabotage a project, morphing it from a promising outset into a morass of time-consuming frustration and annoyance, sometimes with nothing to show for all the grief you’ve gone through. That can be particularly galling when you end up apologising for something that was not at all your fault and entirely outside your control.

And you know the really weird thing about working collaboratively? Nobody ever tells you how to do it; you’re supposed to know. But my experience is that many people don’t know how to collaborate well. So here are ten top tips for successful collaboration.

  1. Set sensible deadlines. If you’re happy to write a book chapter that you think will take you a week, but you don’t have that much spare time till six months from now, say so. And if you think it will take you a week, allow a fortnight. Over-committing doesn’t help you or anyone else.
  1. Manage your time well, from day to day and week to week, and at monthly and yearly levels too. Plan, schedule, re-schedule as necessary. Do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it – or explain why you can’t at the earliest opportunity.
  1. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Problems arise in everyone’s life. If you encounter a problem that will affect your ability to meet your commitments, tell everyone who needs to know as soon as you can, and give them a realistic revised date when you’ll be able to get the work done.
  1. If someone else is causing a delay, you may need to take control, particularly if you have contractual or other inflexible deadlines and the delaying person isn’t communicating well – or at all. In that case, the best approach is to send a polite email with appropriate cc’s so everyone knows where the delay originates. But do word your message carefully: the aim is to protect your own reputation without damaging anyone else’s, so stick to the facts.
  1. Don’t throw good time after bad. If you’re collaborating with people who are missing deadlines and not answering your emails, chase them once or twice then stop. Don’t stress about it, just focus on other work.
  1. Accept feedback gracefully, even if it seems unpalatable at first. Don’t take it personally because it isn’t personal, even if it feels personal, even if it looks personal. It’s an opportunity to learn things you’d be very unlikely to learn any other way, even if they’re not the things you wanted to learn. So thank whoever gave you the feedback and make the best use of it you can.
  1. Reflect on your collaborations – with your collaborators if possible, on your own if not. What went well? Why? What didn’t go so well? Why? What would you do differently another time?
  1. celebrationMake time to celebrate a collaboration that goes well, or even well enough. If you can meet up with your collaborators, so much the better: go for a drink or a meal together and congratulate each other in person. If not, celebrate online, in a private meeting or via email or social media. Or simply send a card to say ‘thank you’ or ‘well done’.
  1. Whether your collaborators are your colleagues, your students, your staff or your friends, be as professional with each of them as you would be with the most senior person in your field or in your organisation.
  1. When you’re planning a new collaboration, share these tips with your potential collaborators at the earliest possible stage and ask whether they’re willing to sign up to them. If they’re not, don’t go ahead with the proposed collaboration.

Of course sometimes life gets in the way and things go wrong. But when you have a strongly functional collaboration, it is much easier to deal with unexpected difficulties. When unforeseen problems occur and your collaboration is floundering, life can be very miserable indeed. If you and your collaborators follow these ten top tips, none of your collaborations will be the ‘pain in the neck’ variety. They should all work smoothly, at the very least, and may well be wonderful and life-enhancing.

The Art Of Asking

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theartofasking_imageFollowing on from last week’s blog post, I’ve been reflecting on the art of asking, why it can be so difficult, and how to make it easier.

I used to find it difficult to ask for help. I am naturally independent, and grew up on second-wave feminism which preached self-reliance. Asking can be hard because it’s a risk: you’re making yourself vulnerable, exposing your wishes or your needs, and the person you are asking might say ‘no’. You could experience that ‘no’ as a rejection or a slap in the face, as derogatory to your very being in the world. Alternatively, you could reflect that nothing major has changed, you’re still in the same position you were in before, and you have lost nothing. Or you could land up somewhere in between.

Asking can be easier in professional than personal contexts. Asking a librarian to help you track down a book, or the IT support desk to help you solve a techie problem, should be stress-free. You’re entitled to ask and it’s their job to help. But when you’re an indie researcher, those organisational networks of obligation don’t exist. So asking for things in professional contexts can be weird, even paralysing: why would anyone want to help me? Why would anyone be willing to put themselves out on my behalf?

I found myself on a steep learning curve in asking when I developed rheumatoid arthritis a couple of years ago and needed help with opening jars and bottles, moving furniture, doing DIY etc. The writer Laura James expresses the necessity of this eloquently and, like her, I have become shameless about asking for help. This has probably helped me learn to ask in other areas. Amanda Palmer’s wonderful book also provided a timely shove in the right direction.

I’ve learned other things as a result of learning to ask for help. For example, some people are incredibly helpful. Professor Rosalind Edwards is one of these people. I met Ros at a conference in Leicester in early 2014 (which, incidentally, I got to go to because I asked, on Twitter). The previous week I’d been to a meeting at the British Library, where I’m on an advisory panel for the Social Welfare Portal, and Ros’s name was mentioned as someone we could ask for help with publicity through her role as Co-Director of the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM). So when I realised she was at the conference, I went to ask her for help on behalf of the Portal, and found out that she’s warm and helpful and funny. We chatted on Twitter in the weeks and months following the conference. Another kind and helpful person, Kandy Woodfield, invited me to be on a panel at the 2014 Research Methods Festival, which Ros helps to organise, so we met again then and had a lovely chat on a bench in the sunshine.

A couple of months ago I decided that I would really like to be a Visiting Fellow at NCRM. I had a look online, but couldn’t find evidence of any opportunities. So I asked Ros. She said NCRM didn’t have visiting fellows, but they’d been thinking about whether to start. I said was there any chance they could start with me? She went away and talked to the other directors, and they said ‘yes’.

They said ‘yes’!

So as from this very day, I am a Visiting Fellow at NCRM. Because I asked. I wouldn’t be one, otherwise.

Another incredibly helpful person, Gemma Noon, is currently Impact Evaluation lead at Calgary Public Library. I met her online in the noughties, we met in person once before she emigrated from the UK, and we’ve kept in touch. She stunned me by inviting me to give a keynote in Canada, all expenses paid – my first international speaking engagement! I didn’t even ask! But I did ask Gemma whether she had any contacts with local universities, and she put me in touch with Carol Shepstone at Mount Royal University, and I asked her whether she would like me to do any work for them while I was in the area, and she said ‘yes’. Then, at the creative research methods conference a couple of months ago, I saw Barbara Schneider present her excellent research. Barbara works at the University of Calgary, so I asked her whether she would like me to do any work for her while I was in the area – and she said ‘yes’. So in late October I’m off to Canada, to work for the library service and two universities in Calgary.

They said ‘yes’!

Some of this, of course, is sheer luck, and being in the right place at the right time. And there is an old saying: ‘the harder you work, the luckier you get’, and I do work hard, so I figured that was the other influencing factor. I sent Ros a draft of this post, as a courtesy because it features her, and she told me firmly that my analysis was incomplete. She wrote,blush

“Of course, we don’t just give out fellowships because we get asked, and I bet you wouldn’t be invited to Calgary if it wasn’t because people think you are rather good at this research thing. You miss that bit of the story!”

*blush*

Even so, if I hadn’t asked for help, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’m also finding that the more I practice asking, the easier it becomes. I now regularly ask people for help: old friends and new, professional contacts, random strangers on Twitter. Of course they don’t all say ‘yes’ – but a surprisingly large number of people are able and willing to help.

If the prospect of asking repels you, ask yourself this: how do you respond when someone asks you for help? Are you generally willing to help others? I bet you are; it probably makes you feel good. And if that’s the case, why aren’t you willing to give other people that feel-good sensation by asking them for help in turn? Go on, give it a try – the results can be surprising and delightful.

How to get into conferences for free

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burglarI picked up a blog post from Twitter yesterday that left me very cross. I decided not to retweet it, mainly because I couldn’t fit all my crossness into a one-word comment on the original tweet, and partly because I didn’t want anyone to think I was condoning the views expressed by the blogger.

The post was published anonymously by someone calling themselves ‘Weasely’, who complains about the cost of a recent four-day conference priced at £120 for early birds or £150 for late bookers (£100/£130 for postgraduates), plus a year’s membership of the British International Studies Association (BISA) if you’re not already a member (£30). Weasely thinks that if you can’t afford to go to a conference, you should simply gatecrash – he or she suggests that forging a badge would be helpful – and take everything you can while you’re there, including food and drink for later. Carry tupperware and flasks for this purpose, advises Weasely, and help yourself to a bottle of wine from the wine reception. Get your tenured friends, or those with permanent posts, to help you gain illicit entry. The blog post is titled ‘Steal This Conference’.

The conference Weasely complains about was run by BISA which, like the Social Research Association (SRA) on whose Board I sit, is a learned society and a registered charity. The Boards of these organisations are made up of volunteers who work hard in their own time, alongside a small number of paid staff to put on events like these – who, because they are very dedicated people, also work in their own time as well as their paid time. BISA has one full-time member of staff, the SRA has the equivalent of approx 1.5 full-time staff, and these people are not highly paid. Also, learned societies, being registered charities, are not for profit. If we’re lucky, we do make a surplus from our events, which is used to support our other activities for public benefit, and to build up reserves against the times when we’re not so lucky and we make a loss.

Attending a conference without paying either reduces the surplus or increases the loss. This practice would push up costs. Even Weasely’s suggestions are likely to have that effect, as learned societies will now have to consider buying more expensive badges, perhaps with bar codes or holograms and the equipment to read them.  They will also have to consider paying people to monitor entry to individual sessions as well as to the conference as a whole.

I don’t know why Weasely thinks it’s OK to steal a conference place, food and drink etc. His or her commenters are more measured. One uses shoplifting as an analogy, which seems quite reasonable in the circumstances, and Weasely responds rudely with the view that ‘shoplifting can be essential for survival, so screw you’. I don’t agree with the tone or the content of that comment. Debate is vital; rudeness is neither necessary nor collegial. Conference attendance is not essential for survival, even in career terms. Asking for help can be essential for survival; shoplifting is stealing. Stealing is rarely defensible, and stealing from volunteer-led charities is despicable.

I think BISA did really well to keep the price of their conference so low. Postgraduate members were being charged £25 per day, which has to be a loss leader as that wouldn’t cover the cost of venue hire, food and drink, let alone the delegate pack, admin support, and all the other costs. I suspect there was a great deal of work behind the scenes, e.g. to attract support from sponsors, persuade suppliers to offer discounts, and find funding for speakers. But I do realise that even such low costs are out of reach for some people – because I am one of those people. As an indie researcher, I would have to pay at least £150 (early bird booking fee plus a year’s membership) plus travel and accommodation, which hikes the cost dramatically, and be prepared to spend four days not earning any money. That is often the clincher.

But sometimes there are conferences I really want to go to. So I’ve found out how to go to conferences for nothing, and do so ethically: offer to volunteer. Conference organisers often need people to do all sorts of things: staff reception desks, babysit important speakers, run around at plenary sessions with roving microphones. If you have the skills, you can convene or chair a panel or two. And, as with festivals, helping for some of the time gets you free entry the rest of the time, often with travel and accommodation thrown in. Plus you get to meet the organisers who are often influential people. So all I have to contribute is my unpaid time, and that feels like a fair exchange to me.

This isn’t widely advertised, and may not be available at all conferences, but it isn’t hard to ask. For me, asking would be easier than stealing. So if you want to go to a conference, but the cost is more than you can afford, give the organisers a call or drop them an email. Explain your predicament, tell them about your skills and abilities, and ask whether you can offer your services in exchange for a conference place (and, if necessary, travel/accommodation). Do this as far in advance as you can – though it’s always worth a try, even if you only find out about a particular conference at the last minute. I’d be very surprised if you didn’t receive a sympathetic hearing at the very least, and you might well find yourself with a good deal and some new friends into the bargain.

Shut Up And Read

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readingI loved my writing retreat over the last two weeks, but it’s left me feeling a bit unbalanced. No, not like that! Let me explain. All writing and no reading has left me feeling as if I need to follow up my writing retreat with a reading retreat. I love reading as much as I love writing. I’ve been reading intensively about creative research methods for the last couple of years, and now there’s lots of other research-related reading I want to do. But why can it be so hard to find the time?

I think it’s partly because reading isn’t seen as ‘doing something’, particularly by managers. Practitioners who I interviewed for my first research methods book gave varying reports of this. Some said their managers did value reading and would recommend journal articles they thought would be helpful for staff. Others said their managers did not value reading, particularly where staff had a busy caseload. Yet how can practice be evidence-based if staff and managers don’t have time to read the evidence?

Never having been an academic, I naively thought that this would be different in academia: that all academics would understand the importance of reading, and the act of reading would be valued as an essential part of an academic’s work. Sadly, I now know that this is not the case – or, at least, not everywhere.

I had an interesting discussion on Twitter last week with Inger Mewburn (aka @thesiswhisperer) and Annika Coughlin about why reading isn’t regarded as work in the same way as writing. (Inger pointed out there was a blog post in that, so here it is – part one, at least; she has promised to write a follow-up.) Maybe one reason is that reading is something you can do anywhere: on a sun lounger, during your commute, in the bath, on a plane. It’s portable, a time-filler, and that makes it seem like a leisure activity rather than work.

I think perhaps another reason is that reading is hard to quantify. You can say ‘I’ve read this article today’, but have you read every word? Did you understand it all? How much can you remember? I’m sure we’re all familiar with the phenomenon of reading something and retaining nothing, even straight after we’ve finished. The number of books or articles you’ve read is irrelevant if you didn’t understand or retain much of their contents. On the other hand, writing is very quantifiable, even if none of the 500 words you’ve just written will make it into your final draft.

Like writing, though, reading helps us think, and learn, and understand the world around us. Writing, thinking, and reading are the three pillars of the researcher’s working life – or they should be. As a researcher and a writer myself, I want people to read and use research and articles and books, because otherwise what’s the point of all my hard work? Some organisational cultures are much better at producing research than using it, which seems to me like a crazy waste of resources. We should use research first, and only produce more research when that’s really needed. But to use research, we have to… guess what? Wait for it… yep, we have to read.

TBR books Jun 15We all have to read. Including me. Here’s my current TBR pile – and it’s going to grow bigger, as I’ve just finished an online shopping spree to help me catch up on some topics of interest. I’ve made a commitment to reading at least one chapter a day, six days a week. And I’m not the only person who has been thinking along these lines; yesterday @tseenster of the Research Whisperer posted in a similar vein about her commitment to read at least two journal articles a day.

I’ve been wondering for a while why people are so keen on ‘shut up and write’ sessions, yet nobody runs ‘shut up and read’ sessions. And why do we have an #acwri hashtag on Twitter, but not an #acread hashtag? If we, as researchers and writers, can’t make reading a priority, then we can’t expect other people to read our work either. And that would be a sorry state of affairs. So maybe it’s time for us all to start talking about reading, sharing what we read, and generally telling the world that reading is both important and enjoyable.

Writing, Fast and Slow

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fast and slowOn Monday of last week, Pat Thomson published a very interesting post about writing fast. I don’t use the exact approach she describes (though I might, one day, now I know about it) but I do often write fast, so the post resonated with me. I was writing fast that very day, and the day after as well; Pat’s post kept flitting through my mind.

Then last Wednesday, the fourth full day of my writing retreat, I ground to a halt. I did some good thinking, and a little actual writing, but not much. I told myself I was tired – and I was: a big storm had disturbed my sleep on the Monday night, and a recurrent car alarm on the Tuesday. So I did bits and bobs at my desk, in between going out for a walk, and making food, and having a nap. But I knew, really, that the slow-down was part of my process.

I’m good at writing, and part of being good at writing is getting the words down on the screen (or the page, if you’re that way inclined). But now and again there is a day, or part of a day, when the words won’t come. This isn’t me waiting for the muse, or procrastinating, or suffering from writer’s block. Though I much prefer being productive, I know that sometimes I need to do a kind of active waiting. It’s not taking time off, it’s like what musicians do during the rests in a piece, attending closely to the pauses between notes which are as much a part of the music as any of the sounds.

Last Wednesday evening arrived, which was a relief because I could declare myself off duty, fairly sure that the words would be flowing again by next morning. I spoke to my partner on the phone, ate a cheese salad washed down with a glass of wine, and read some more of the terrific Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman-edited issue of the New Statesman. Then I retired to the sofa with a novel and a cup of cocoa, enhanced with a dash of spiced rum, and some salted caramel chocolate. All this with a gorgeous sea view. Bliss! So relaxing.

Around 9.45 pm I got up to head for bed, looked out of the window, and saw a low red moon rising from the Channel between England and France. I have no idea why ideas began to flow just then, but they did, and generated so much energy that before I knew it I was pulling on a jacket and trainers and heading out of the door, over the road, and down the steps onto the beach. The waves thundered onto the shore in rhythm with the insights thundering into my mind. I stomped towards Dungeness, then back towards Dover, shingle crunching underfoot like an army eating popcorn in synch. The moon path followed me, patient and attentive, a French lighthouse winking to its right as if to remind me not to take myself too seriously. I walked until all the ideas had settled, and felt as relieved as if I’d just had a good [insert bodily emission of your choice]. And of course the next morning I was back to working at full speed.

In his great book Thinking, Fast and Slow (which the observant reader will notice inspired the title of this post), Nobel prizewinner Daniel Kahneman explains the difference between our fast, intuitive thinking, and slow, rational thinking. He says, ‘The mental work that produces impressions, intuitions, and many decisions goes on in silence in our mind.’ (2011:4) His central thesis is that human reasoning is flawed, and I’m sure he’s right. But I wonder whether creative thinking is rather different from rational thinking. From learning about my own writing process through several decades, I am certain that now and again I need to make time for slow, intuitive thinking. Perhaps particularly in our world of information overload, I need to make space for the silence in my mind so that the mental work can happen. Sometimes I can do this consciously, such as by booking a writing retreat, or by thinking of a writing problem as I fall asleep and trusting my silent mind to solve it overnight – which it usually does. But sometimes, like last Wednesday, my process tells me it’s time for some slow writing. In practice, that means a few hours or a day with little or no increase in the actual word count. I know from experience that if I ignore this, and try to struggle on, I just get more stuck and cross and frustrated. I’m much better off going for a walk or pottering around the house, actively waiting while the mental work happens, silently, in my mind, which I can’t hear but I can choose to trust. So, although they don’t always come at times that I would deem convenient, I’ve learned the value of my slow writing days.

Writing Retreat

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writing retreatI am on a solo writing retreat, on the south coast of England. The photograph shows my workspace for this week and next. I’m in an unfashionable area so it’s comparatively cheap. I looked at Cornwall, initially, and found a sea view meant that even a studio flat would cost over £1,000 for a fortnight at this time of year. Here I’ve been able to rent a whole house for much less, and that means I can have friends to visit at the weekend which will be fun.

But from Sunday to Friday of this week, then Monday to Friday of next, I have 11 uninterrupted days to write. I know some people prefer communal writing retreats, but I’m such a compulsive communicator that if I went on one of those, I’d probably spend more time talking to people than typing words. Despite being a sociable person, I also enjoy my own company, so some solitude is a welcome change from my usual densely populated life.

There are 15 tasks on my to-do list ranging from guest blog posts to books. Of course I don’t expect to finish them all – indeed, five depend on input from other people which may or may not arrive during this fortnight. But I do expect to make significant progress with several, tick off at least three, and reach ‘next draft’ stage with at least two others.

Having a bunch of tasks to choose from helps my productivity. If I’m growing weary of one task, and losing interest, I can turn to a different challenge. And when I simply get tired of writing altogether, a little reading or a short walk will refresh my mental muscles.

rough sea picI love to write with a sea view. Some people find it distracting, but I find it relaxes me and all the space of sky and depth of sea somehow offers more room for creativity. Though today, with gales and huge waves striking the shingle shelf opposite so hard that the spray hits the second-floor window in front of me and I can feel tremors through the house where I’m sitting, it is a tad distracting at times. But I’ve ticked off the first of the items to tick off, this morning, so I’m allowing myself a little sea-gazing now and then.

I also enjoy the way in which working on one task can shed light on another, seemingly unrelated, task. There’s a feeling I experience when I’m making meaning, as if everything is connected to everything else in a myriad of beautiful ways. I can never see or know the whole, but sometimes, through the interaction of thoughts and words and being and doing, I can comprehend a little more of the pattern than usual. It is not, and will never be, within my grasp, but now and again I can almost touch it, and maybe, if I reach a little further, think more, move more… I find that sensation addictive, and it’s a big part of what keeps me writing.

I am very, very lucky to be able to give myself this space to write. It’s not often I have both the money and the time. And I wouldn’t want to work like this always, but I find it really helpful, now and again, for making a good deal of progress in a short time. So it’s both self-indulgent and productive, which is a rare combination.

Sometimes the writing is smooth and steady, sometimes words spill onto the screen as my fingers hammer the keys. Sometimes I can see my way ahead clearly, other times my view is obscured. But, like the waves, the words keep coming.

Cross-Cultural Research Ethics

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cross-culturalLast week I presented at a seminar at the University of Nottingham hosted by BAICE, aka the British Association for International and Comparative Education. Like the UK and Ireland Social Research Association (SRA), on whose Board I sit, BAICE is a learned society and an organisational member of the UK’s Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS). I was presenting, in my SRA role, on behalf of the AcSS. This always makes me slightly uncomfortable as I’m not a Fellow of the AcSS and don’t really feel qualified to speak for the Academy. Luckily another of my SRA colleagues, who is a Fellow, was at the seminar and was able to help me out.

The seminar was on ‘cross-cultural research ethics in international and comparative education’. Presenting for the AcSS on this topic was an interesting exercise, as the Academy is not a very cross-cultural organisation: the Fellows are 93% professors, 69% male, and my contacts with them suggest that the white middle classes are in a massive majority. My presentation focused on the five generic ethical principles the AcSS has developed for its member societies to use. I’ve been working on a redraft of the SRA’s ethical guidelines based around these principles, and had already registered that they are focused around concepts which are not culturally neutral, such as democracy and inclusivity. There are cultures that despise democracy, seeing it as a discredited belief system, and others that either do not practise inclusivity or practise a very different version from that which the UK educational and social research culture espouses.

Perhaps because BAICE is focused on international matters, ‘culture’ was in danger of being conflated with ‘nationality’, so I argued that it is a much wider issue. The previous day I had been in a workshop for a piece of evaluation research that had included service users, volunteers, staff, partners, and evaluators. That’s five different cultures, right there. Then of course those professionally defined cultures intersect with people’s race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc, to create a whole world of cultural complexity.

The other presentations covered a wide range of related questions. How should we manage cultural conflicts within and beyond academic departments? How ethical is it to use RCTs in educational or social research when you know that members of control groups will be disadvantaged? How can we be inclusive as researchers in situations where including marginalised people, or those living in difficult circumstances, may put them at risk? How can we support researchers and teachers who are operating in a global environment, whether physical or virtual, to work in ethical ways?

Then we were asked to discuss whether we thought it would be possible to formulate generic ethical principles for cross-cultural research. We didn’t reach firm conclusions, but we did agree that if such principles were to be devised, the fundamental value should be respect, and the key process would be dialogue. Any generic principles would need to be broad, neither prescriptive nor vacuous, and should be tested in a variety of locations. Generic principles will always be open to interpretation, and may in some contexts conflict with each other, so they would need to be constantly negotiated. But generic principles could be useful in overturning the current myth of cultural neutrality in some academic mechanisms such as anonymous peer review.

We also agreed that ethical research is not, and should not be, only or predominantly about data collection; it is relevant to all stages of the research process. And we agreed that it is not only students, researchers, and teachers who need educating in ethics, but also funders and members of ethical review committees.

As researchers and educators, we have an ethical duty to keep educating ourselves, because ethical approaches to research change as the world changes. It is essential to take a reflexive approach to this, including locating ourselves culturally. It helps to realise that the same ethical issues arise in lots of different types of work in different disciplines and locations, so if you look beyond your professional and geographic boundaries, you can often learn from others rather than re-inventing the ethical wheel.

We concluded that, from an ethical perspective, the quality of human interactions should be fundamental to the quality of research and teaching. This is especially the case in cross-cultural work, where people may be operating with very different assumptions. However, this is not considered relevant by the current arbitrators of quality in research or teaching. Our view, though, is that it would be more ethical all round to shift the focus away from regulations and bureaucracy and towards human well-being.

While I am, generally speaking, irrepressibly optimistic, I do wonder whether that will happen in my lifetime.

Why I Am Saying No To Some Universities

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piggy bank and coinsIn the last few weeks I have been asked to deliver seminars at the universities of York and Leicester. I had the time and would have enjoyed the experiences. Also, in both cases, the people inviting me were my friends. So why did I say ‘no’?

I was asked to work for nothing.

Both universities offered to pay my travel expenses. This has been standard practice for many years, designed to ensure that academics would not be out of pocket when visiting another institution. Visiting academics don’t need to be paid by their host institution because they are already drawing a good salary from their own institution.

Independent researchers are not drawing a salary and often don’t earn a great deal. I have been open about my income. As I thought about the invitations from York and Leicester, it occurred to me that universities were probably open about their income, too. So I did some research and found that, although often buried deep within layers of web pages, they do indeed publish their financial statements.

In 2013/14, the income of the University of York was £305.4m and its expenditure was £297.2m. It has total net assets of £243.8m, and a retained surplus of £10.5m.

In the same financial year, the income of the University of Leicester was £286.7m and its expenditure was £279.2m. It has total net assets of £172.6m, and a retained surplus of £7.6m.

Clearly universities must exercise sound financial stewardship. They have staff to pay and to provide pensions for, and I believe that university staff work hard and should be paid appropriately. There are buildings to be maintained and refurbished, equipment costs, perhaps debts to service, and so on. But these are wealthy institutions with an annual surplus of millions of pounds. Yet, while they evidently want my expertise, they won’t pay me a couple of hundred.

I found it embarrassing to refuse my friends’ requests. In both cases they said they had no budget to pay visiting scholars. Clearly universities hold on tight to their cash. But in doing so, they minimise the types of expertise available to their students. Is that a sensible educational strategy?

In recent weeks, I have been cheerfully paid a sensible fee for work at Staffordshire University, which is significantly less wealthy than York or Leicester (income: £118.4m, expenditure: £116m, net assets £44.2m, surplus £3.6m). I have also been paid by Swansea University (income £205.8m, expenditure £182.3m, net assets £156.5m, surplus £7.2m). And I am in discussions with Birmingham City University, who said my fee was what they were expecting (income: £173.8m, expenditure £153.6m, net assets £219.9m, surplus £23.2m).

Although this is not any kind of a representative sample, I used my researcher’s eye to try to discern a pattern. York is a Russell Group university; Leicester and Swansea were founded around the same time in the early 1920s; Staffordshire and Birmingham City are post-92. So there is no apparent consistency here.

I wonder what prospective students might think. Would you like to go to a university that will encourage you to learn from a wide variety of expert people? Or would you prefer one that will restrict you to learning from its own faculty and some volunteers?

Creative Research Methods conference – 8 May 2015

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This SRA conference, where my latest book was formally launched, was a wonderful gathering of diverse researchers. We had academic researchers, government researchers, researchers working in research companies and charities and other organisations, and independent researchers. There were researchers from North and South America, Canada, and other European countries as well as the UK. And we had researchers from across the arts, humanities, and social sciences: from media, design, law, sociology, psychology, and geography, among others. This diversity made for an incredibly stimulating environment. A delegate commented to me that the conference could easily have run over three days, not one, and I think they were right.

Some of the delegates during the pipe-cleaner exercise (photo by David Gauntlett)

Some of the delegates during the pipe-cleaner exercise (photo by David Gauntlett)

The keynote speaker was Professor David Gauntlett. He spoke about the ethical imperative of reciprocity and dialogue in research, and how making and discussing metaphorical artefacts could provide a positive experience for participants. David often uses Lego, but on this occasion he used the pipe cleaners in delegates’ packs to involve us in a participatory demonstration, asking us to build a metaphor of our feelings on our journey that morning to the British Library conference centre. This short exercise was entertaining and instructive, and David built on that to show how making things and talking about them could yield richer data for researchers than simply asking questions. His presentation was dynamic and set the tone for the day.

The morning and afternoon workshop presentations made up a wonderful patchwork with 24 vibrant blocks of colour. They were in four concurrent streams, which regular readers of this blog will recognise: arts-based research, research using technology, mixed methods research, and transformative research frameworks. Presentations included:

This is only a small selection, chosen because they had further information online that I could link to for anyone who wanted more than just a headline. Details of all the workshop presentations can be found in the conference storify which was ably created by our official live-tweeter, Annika Coughlin. The presentations I went to (in the transformative research frameworks stream) were excellent, and I gather from those in other workshop streams that the quality was consistent throughout.

One of the most exciting moments for me came just before lunch, when I discovered the conference hashtag #CRM15 was trending on Twitter! After lunch Jude England, Head of Research Engagement at the British Library, gave a talk on ‘The Pleasures and Perils of Digital’. She encouraged researchers to find, use, and reference secondary data, and gave some good tips on how to do this, as well as explaining how the Library works and how it can help researchers.

At the end of the conference, I gave a short speech to launch my book, Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide. This was immediately followed by a celebratory wine reception, kindly sponsored by my publisher Policy Press. Overall it was a wonderful and inspiring day. I can hardly imagine a better conference, or a more enjoyable book launch.

Walking to work: me and my treadmill desk

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me at treadmill desk picI guess by now pretty much everyone knows that it’s not a great idea to spend the majority of your time sitting down. But when you’re a researcher and a writer, that’s exactly what you do, at your desk, often all day every day. Now and again you get to go out and sit down in your car, or on a train, till you get to a meeting where you sit down and talk to people. Not a great improvement, as I’m sure you’ll agree.

A couple of years I heard about standing desks, and was interested, though unsure I’d be able to stand for hours at a time. I asked around on Twitter and found some people who liked them and said I’d get used to it. But I still wasn’t sure. Then I found out about sit-stand desks, which let you swap between sitting and standing. That sounded more manageable, but I still wasn’t entirely convinced, and the price was prohibitive with (at the time) nothing available for under £1,000.

Also, the received wisdom is that we should all walk ten thousand steps a day. I don’t have a gadget to count my steps for me, so I did some old-fashioned counting and sums a while back and worked out that I rarely hit 10K, most days landing somewhere between 2K and 5K. I couldn’t see how a desk that simply enabled me to stand would help much with my overall fitness.

Then I heard about treadmill desks. And I really, really wanted one. But the prices were even more eye-watering than for the sit-stand desks. Also, I was worried about how many electrical components could go wrong – which, in a worst-case scenario, could mean shelling out for a whole new ensemble.

Social media came to my rescue, specifically the lovely Nicola Morgan (@nicolamorgan), eminent writer, speaker, haver of bright ideas, and all-round Good Egg. She in turn had been alerted by her friend Vee Frier to the possibility of using a standing desk with an office treadmill. Nicola implemented this ensemble and found that it worked really well for her.

And now I have one too. Specifically: a Stand Steady desk, which sits on top of my old desk (I don’t usually shop at Amazon but they’re the only UK stockist), and an Office Fitness walking treadmill. The treadmill goes up to more than 4 miles per hour; Nicola is happily working at 2.5 mph and I’ve accelerated from 1.5 to 2 mph over the last few weeks. At that speed, I do 76 steps a minute, or 4,560 in an hour. Which means that, in just two hours a day, I do 9,120 steps – and suddenly my 10k target is very achievable indeed. And I have no trouble typing while walking slowly and steadily, as this video demonstrates:

I have no idea whether I’ve lost weight, as I don’t use scales, but I feel a little more toned in places. And fitter. Also, like Nicola, I don’t need to use the heating so much, as moving keeps me warm. The sound of the treadmill doesn’t worry me at all, in fact it’s quite soothing. The only thing I don’t like is that the treadmill stops, after 30 minutes, very suddenly with no warning. I think some beeping and a gradual slow-down would be safer and more pleasant. But I do like the textured footplates on either side of the treadmill, which make it easy and safe to move to a standing position, so I can e.g. reach down to my old desktop for my headphones when the phone rings, and then step back onto the moving treadmill while I chat with whoever has called me.

I can’t walk all the time I’m working – I tried that to begin with, and wore myself out – so I’ve had to create another workstation for sitting (I have arthritis which affects my hands and they don’t work well enough for me to shift everything around when I want to change position). Luckily I have another desk, which already had a computer screen and most of a docking station so, a few accessories later, I was sorted. I can’t imagine going back to sitting all day. I love my treadmill desk!

Creative research methods in the social sciences [FC]There are two other things I love this week. One is the first review of my new book on Creative Research Methods, which I was glad and relieved to see is a positive review. And the other is the conference on Creative Research Methods at the British Library conference centre, this Friday, where the book will be officially launched. I can’t wait!