A podcast from Kelly Preece about researchers, development...and everything in-betwen!
Episodes
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Monday Sep 12, 2022
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The eighth epsiode of the series will feature Dr. Marq Smith from University College London and his talk 'Whiteness, positionality, allyship and doing the work.'
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription
00:09
Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development, and everything in between.
00:32
So, hi, everyone. I'm Amy Shakespeare, and this is my colleague, Deborah Ashfield. And we're going to be presenting together today, we're both first year PhD students at the University of Exeter's Penryn campus. And we wanted to do something for the decolonizing Research Festival. And we're originally kind of thinking of doing separate presentations or workshops. But then we realized sort of how much overlap there actually is between our seemingly different research interests. So I'm based in the history department, and Deborah is based in the English department. So I just kind of wanted to caveat today's presentation by saying that it's very much a work in progress. It's very kind of experimental and drawing the two things together and seeing how they sort of work in dialogue with each other. And so we're just trialing some ideas here today. And we're really grateful that you're kind of here to join us for that. And we'd very much welcome any feedback that you have, or any sort of thoughts that it sparks for yourselves. And we're hoping to leave some time to open up the discussion at the end of the session for us all to think about extraction, and last and absence within our own work. And they'll also be time for questions, but do feel free as we're going through to pop questions in the chat. And then maybe we can kind of have more of a unmute and, and free for all at the end. So
02:16
yeah, so we're going to be talking a little bit over kind of force of the next half an hour, 45 minutes, between jumping between ourselves and then opening out to everyone else to join in, we're going to start off talking about kind of some of the differences between terms like decolonizing, and decolonial. What kind of nuances and politics and differences kind of in between, between those two terms are. Then I'm going to move into talking a little bit about extraction and the refusal extraction. So I'm going to be talking a bit about extractive research practices and how these relate to extractive colonialism, colonialism. And then we're going to be thinking a bit about connections between anti extractivism and anti colonialism and research. Then Amy's gonna be chatting a bit about the role of loss in relation to her research, which looks at repatriation, from UK museums to indigenous communities, and so called Canada. And then she's going to be thing, she's going to be talking a bit about the kind of the potential absence and what the absence is left by spaces might mean and what kind of possibilities that might lie there. Particularly in terms of anticolonial practice and spaces.
03:51
Yeah, so that's kind of, as Deb said, an overview. We wanted to start by just asking whether you sort of can use a reaction or the hands up function. Do you consider your work to be decolonial or decolonizing? So yeah, just do either a thumbs up reaction if you do or the hands up. Okay, so got a couple. Great, so a few people do. Brilliant. And now we wanted to ask, do you consider your work to be anti colonial? And the same thing again? One, two, okay. So fairly even split between decolonial anti colonial, which is really interesting. So, you may be familiar with this article from Turkey. And young decolonization is not a metaphor. But we really wanted to sort of introduce a few key quotes from the article to start today's session off. Both Deborah and I use the term anticolonial, rather than decolonial. And tackling Yanga and a few others have been key to us both separately, I should say, but both coming to that conclusion. And it might seem like semantics, but actually, there's really kind of powerful meaning behind the term decolonization and so as this quote says, decolonization brings about the repatriation of indigenous land and life, it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. So we can see here that that message is very much about land back and life back. And so thinking about how does can research be decolonial? Or is there another word like anticolonial, that might fill that space better?
06:12
And so yeah, talk to me and go on to talk about this trend noticed, which we'll kind of all be familiar with. And they say when one trend that we've noticed with growing apprehension is the ease with which the language of decolonization has been superficially adopted into education and other social sciences, supplanting prior ways of talking about social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches, which approaches which dissenter, dissenter settler perspectives. And this is, it's like a really kind of key message that runs through their their art article is that decolonization isn't a synonym for diversification or for inclusion, or for kind of the many, like, really, like really important kind of like social justice oriented, anti racist, kind of work, and critical methods. And pedagogies that happened in university spaces. And so they kind of, yeah, they just are, they push on this this term, decolonial and decolonizing, and the ways that it's been adopted into the university, and it's used in university spaces, in kind of really interesting ways that yeah, kind of unsettle some of the ways that kind of, we're trained to think about what decolonize what decolonization is, and means.
07:41
Yeah, and then this final quote, that we've picked out, kind of alludes to what Debs was just talking about, in terms of, even if the work that we're doing is out, you know, outrightly clearly anti racist, even if it's for social justice, or critical of what's gone before, this harm that the term can do in terms of, you know, killing the possibility of decolonization, really centering whiteness, thinking about that sort of white guilt, and that sort of idea of, of the Savior as well. I think that, that adoption of the term decolonization plays into all of those things, and can be quite problematic. So we just really wanted to start with that, as I say, to kind of outline why we'll be talking in terms of anti colonial you know, it's not without its own critiques, which I think Deborah's gonna go on to talk about, but just really outlining that difference, and, and why we're making it. So yeah, I'm gonna hand it over to Deborah now to talk about extraction and extractivism.
08:57
Hi, yeah, so um, I just kind of as a kind of as a little bit of preamble pre blurb, I work kind of between contemporary poetry studies, soundscape studies, critical technology studies bioacoustics, kind of broadly under the Environmental Humanities, umbrella. And I, but today, I'm going to be talking mainly about reading and reading methods more generally. And the place of practicing refusal and retooling in relation to extractive research logics and extractive reading practices. I yeah, I work on poetry mainly. So reading and close reading in particular is fairly central in terms of methods that I use. So what I'm going to be talking about in the next kind of 15 minutes or so it's kind of an experimental live bibliography, or sort of process of walking back through and with some of the texts, thinkers, tools, complications and tensions that are continually structuring and dissolving the structure of my practice. Yeah, so I work on extractivism. And particularly in my research, I think a lot about the ways in which looking out for and paying attention to the tendencies towards extractivism. And extractive logics in research methods and practices can give us information about where the worn habits of colonialism, conquest etcetera, reside and take root in our disciplinary and interdisciplinary methods and practices. So, what do we mean when we talk about extractivism? In these terms? Is it different from extraction? How does it manifest in the modern university in teaching and research? What does it mean to be anti extractive and how does all of this relate to colonialism, colonialism and the practice of carrying out anti colonial research or using anti colonial methodologies and you can get to the next slide. Thank you. So, let's begin with some definitions. Etymologically the verb to extract comes from the Latin extra hearing to draw out the term moved into popular circulation in the late 16th, early 17th centuries, and kind of quickly came to signify the often violent process of getting out the contents of anything by force, taking out anything embedded or firmly fixed, also refers to the process of taking from something of which the thing taken was a part. In early you said and still now it revert it refers to various processes of kind of obtaining constituent elements, juicers, etc, from a thing or substance by suction pressure, distillation, or any chemical or mechanical operation, both personal and material agents. So the employment of these various forms of force as a means for assuming access to so called resources, is an ongoing Pologne act, enactment of colonial and capitalist logics that rely upon self maximization and profit as justification for harm. However, I argue, in my work alongside many others, that the problem of extraction and extractivism doesn't necessarily begin and end with whether or not harm and damage are immediately visible, or perceptible as a result of the process of extraction. My project begins when the position and ethic of obligation and reciprocity must replace an extractive model an extractive knowledge economy, in order for, in order to produce knowledge in ways that stand up outside the logics that govern the colonial academic industrial complex. So I'm, I'm entangled with, obviously, we all are, and working within the parameters of this well established, dominant Western New colonial system of knowledge production. And it's therefore inevitable in my project that I'm inadvertently reproducing some of the assumptions and violence is that it's awesome. But I'm also hoping to kind of diagnose and interrupt and in a third University as possible, which is an amazing text, by the way, thoroughly recommend it. The person puts this split obligation really well in his discussions of the ways in which the first, second and third universities, of which the dynamic between the three he explains really well, and I recommend going and reading it.
13:34
Yeah, he explains this split obligation between the three universities which are all coexisting in a kind of constantly malfunctioning machine or assemblage of knowledge and practices. So he says, regardless of its kind of colonial structure, because school or the university is an assemblage of machines, and not a monolithic institution, its machinery is always being subverted towards decolonizing purposes. The bits of machinery that make up the decolonizing University are driven by decolonial desires with decolonizing dreamers who are subversively part of the machinery and part machine themselves. So I'm talking about in terms of the split obligations. These subversive beings wreak scavenge, retool and reassemble the colonizing university into decolonizing contractions. They're cyborgs with a decolonizing desire, you might choose to be one of them. In the third University, which is also inside of the first and second universities. The tools and methods owned by the first university are susceptible to being co opted to anti colonial abolitionist post disciplinary, creative and laboratory and due to my projects focus on taking and interrogating the extractive and colonial origins, uses and entanglements of various tools. methods between the sciences and the humanities. I work kind of in soundscape study. So I think a lot about hydrophones underwater microphones in relation to kind of close reading methods in the humanities. Le pathosans text here provides powerfully grounding ways in which to envisage how this kind of CO option of tools might be enacted as participation in an ongoing collaborative interdisciplinary transnational and trans historical practice of refusing the extractive logics of the first and second universities. Often though, these logics of extractivism and automatic access might not be immediately or obviously identifiable as such. Often they're veiled by suggestions of environmental goods, benevolence, in essence, care. But care in itself can be violent care can be a violation. Our work as Catherine McKittrick puts it so brilliantly can you go to the next sliding? Thank you. Work as Catherine McKenna, McKittrick puts it so brilliantly in data science and other stories to another key kind of methodological texts for my project is to notice this logic, your recursive logic that depicts our presently Ecocide or in genocide or wild as normal and unalterable and breach it. dislodging by biocentric system of knowledge and showing that the natural sciences the humanities and the social sciences are when thought together generative sites of inquiry. One way in which McKittrick suggests doing this noticings breaching of colonial logics is through attention to the politics of citation are our bibliographies extractive did they reproduce the same colonial logics that structure so much of our learning and teaching in the modern Western University. McKittrick calls out how sometimes citation practices do not take the time to feel and recognize liberation. Sometimes referencing signals illusion rather than study. This image of a work cited page containing references to books chapters, articles have been skim read. For neat confirming quotations. Best was kind of all too familiar when I first came across it. Reading McKittrick, I was reminded of and convicted by the ways in which the academy continues to teach and reward deeply colonial acts of extractivism and reading and the ways in which these practices of extractive reading have real material effects.
18:00
are in the waiting room and I've been steadily picked?
18:03
Go back to the one before. Yeah, perfect. So McKittrick offers an alternative, then a sort of next one. Sorry. McKittrick offers an alternative. She says What if the practice of referencing sourcing and crediting is always bursting with intellectual life and takes us outside ourselves? What if we read outside ourselves not for ourselves but to actively or know ourselves? to unhinge enough to come to know each other intellectually, inside and outside the academy Academy, as collaborators have generous and of collective and generous and capacious stories. So I hope that by refusing the logics of unit directionality in reading, automatic access, consumption, possession, and self maximization that characterize these colonial macho modes of knowledge production, but we're also well acquainted with, we remain accountable to and engage in other kinds of readerly possibilities and intertextual relationships. These relationships Well, I hope, expand already do extend beyond the confines of extractive so called objective academic reading and research economies and towards practices of accountability, specificity, reciprocity, caution and exchange. These four melodics of extractivism and objectivity are characteristic of what Max libera on in their book pollution is colonialism and other texts which has been foundational to establishing my methodological and theoretical frameworks as well as my citation on politics has called Resource relations. We can move on to the next one. That's okay. Thank you. Part of how LeBron theorizes really resource relations doesn't necessarily travel Allow from the island of Newfoundland on the ancestral traditional homelands of the Baytech unseeded ancestral traditional lands of the Baytech in so called Canada, to the UK, where I am liberal unexplained resource relations, as referring to the morality of maximum use of resources, dispossession and property as a way to control both time and space to secure settler and colonial futures. Because the province of Newfoundland and Labrador exists in the broader context of a settler state and Canada, its relationship to colonialism is different to here in the UK at the former heart of empire, though the two places are closely entangled with each other. The ways in which colonialism functions and persist in these spaces is different and bears different consequences. However, the concept of resource relations itself is still extremely useful and instructive here. And particularly for talking about how to read in a different kind of relation that isn't consumptive, violent or extractive. This is especially important when engaging with the work of those whose ideas and knowledge have historically been othered left out CO opted, stolen, or overwritten in time in favor of maintaining the colonial Imperial, gendered and racialized status quo in the academy. Elsewhere Libran discusses continues discussions of resource relations and extractive knowledge economies in specific terms relating to reading practices in academic work and writing. The social into an intellectual stakes surrounding these kinds of obligations they explain are high, they particularly talk about me guess next slide, okay. They particularly talk about the ways in which the norms of value and valuation that underlie how we are taught to read and write are also the ones that force us out of academic pipeline pipelines and into trauma. In addition to the social stakes, there are intellectual stakes. The problem with one way extractive transmission of knowledge is that the way knowledge is transmitted, acutely affects the type of knowledge transmitted, extractive reading can only result in one kind of knowledge transmission acquisition, working simultaneously inside of and and against a system that profits from extractive reading and citation of economies the academy and alternative reading and citation practice that notices and offers clues. On potential methods for working towards an economy of reciprocity is vital. These practices include proper relational debt, generous, citation, annotation, deep engagement, time span, and more.
23:01
Work working within this concept of reading within an ethic of reciprocity, rather than in an economy of extractivism. The reader is required to acknowledge that being in relation with and to a text and its authors, crucially outside of kind of one's own head. These practices of embracing the the refusal of extractive research methods and specifically extractive reading relations have slowed me down considerably in the best ways, and forced me to reckon with the usual pushes towards long, tight, comprehensive bibliographies. Illuminating the colonial capitalist and self maximizing performativity, they'll enter these urges when these bibliographies are constructed on the basis of kind of skim reading, and extractive reading. Embracing this refusal has caused me to pause and refrain when the instinct cuts in to add a reference for a text that I'm not yet well enough acquainted with. This is a practice of refusal in progress in process and constantly under review.
24:16
isn't me? Yes. Yeah. So kind of going on. From Deborah, my work, as I said, at the beginning might seem quite different. But hopefully, as we go through, it'll become clearer why we've linked them. So what happens when we do refuse extraction led me to thinking about what happens when we can't preserve everything in museums, the tendency is, you know, extract, collect, preserve, and even today with kind of contemporary collecting that museums are pushed to do, that is what they will do. You know, for example, in the Black Lives Matters, protests happen And they went out, they took the placards, put them in their collection, what is the next move. So we might not be able to extract because we're using anti colonial methodologies or for sustainability reasons or accepting that consent has not been given or maybe taken away. And this is kind of where our research starts to overlap. So I look at the anti colonial spaces left by the return of cultural items, from youth head museums to indigenous communities a couple of decades ago, and even up until relatively recently, one of the repeated arguments against repatriation was that it might lead it would lead to a so called slippery slope, and UK museums would empty. Now that might tell you how much isn't UK museums that shouldn't be. But it's also plainly not true, both because not everything in museums as stolen. And because communities often don't want or can't accommodate having everything back that has been stolen. And I'm still grappling with the word loss as it has such negative connotations. In most instances, museum teams today are pleased when a repatriation occurs, meaning that an item can be back with its rightful community. But I'm finding that there's still this element of saying goodbye of curators letting go of something that they believe it's their duty to care for, of a loss. And so I'm looking at different ways museums prepare for this loss and how some choose to embrace it. So I'm focusing on these spaces both metaphorical and physical, that would be left by items that had been returned, and what the potential for those spaces are. Some curators are keen on ethically purchasing contemporary art from the community that they have returned items to, however, you can then end up with more extraction, or with contemporary pieces from communities still being poorly interpreted, or like the vast majority of items being hidden inside storage facilities in perpetuity. And museums have continually collected objects to tell more stories about people and events and can now be described as agencies for managing profusion. However, there are often gaps in collections that being museums supposedly do not have the objects to tell the stories that they want to, or that they can avoid telling truthful stories of colonialism. And this can mean that themes or issues are missed out of exhibitions. So essentially, by putting artifacts at the center of exhibition, it limits the issues available for discussion. Equally, objects that the museums know little about tend to remain neglected. And many museums try to rearrange objects around absence or collect or create new objects to fill gaps. So to Sylvie talks about how there is this persistent museological assumption that the meaning if a sense of an artifact can best be sustained by securing its physical permanence, and this idea of conservation and securing permanence, as I've said, is extraction in and of itself, is a colonial idea that harks back to the formation of many museums in the Victorian era, the false idea and justification that indigenous people were dying out, and therefore their items needed to be preserved for future generations. Coupled with this, continuing to collect fuels a fundamental problem with museum practice and conservation, which is the fact that museums have become completely unsustainable, due to their storage facilities bursting full of collections that never see the light of day. But as the Silvie writes, on the flip side of this, museums often feel that loss equals erasure, to syllabi concludes that the act of saving something means we become implicated in its biography, once you have this intrinsic link to lose that item would be to lose our identities to. So I believe that the fear around repatriation is the idea of losing our colonial identities, losing that Imperial nostalgia, and there's anxiety associated with that surrender.
29:18
Many museums like universities are seeking to decolonize but as Deborah has just talked about, what about when this permanence comes at a cost of extraction, when this item was never meant to be permanent, never meant to be preserved? Or when our preservation of something suffocates or kills a living being? What does this mean for anticolonial practice? And Harrison someone's drilling? Harrison wrote that there is an acceptance that new ways of carrying collecting, curating and communicating the values of heritage must be conceived to accept the inevitability of change, that everything cannot be extracted, saved and preserved and to move away From traditional conservation, I'm just going to close my window to see if that helps.
30:11
So I'm really interested in this provocation made last month that a brilliant event, which I believe was recorded and is or will be available online. This was from zooming qu who asked, what is the non colonial word for conservation. And I've changed that as to what is the anti colonial word for conservation. Seeming was talking about scientific and ecological conservation being a means to continue Imperial resource extraction. But I think that you can make an argument that heritage conservation, and indeed resource rate sorry, and indeed, research is also a means to continue Imperial resource extraction. And this idea of ethically conducting contemporary art to fill the space of repatriated items feeds into that. So rather than looking at ways to fill these spaces with more items, I follow the absence, I look at the spaces left by or awaiting the return of cultural items. And I argue that within this absence, anti colonial practice can be found. The problematic nature of the display of objects is becoming clearer as museums seek to decolonize. But absence has usually been viewed as negative and museums faces. The idea that and rightly so if an if a community were absent from an archive they weren't represented. For instance, Tally talks about the act of absence thing, where museums choose not to display or not to act session objects into their collection, showing how the museum instead of documenting heritage actually produces its own heritage. And this has linked to the idea of Imperial nostalgia, where museums are places where colonialism is historicized, and glorified. On top of this, you often find that in the interpretation of indigenous items, still today, those communities are talked about in the past tense. So where there is a presence of objects, there is still an absent thing of the communities and absence that historicize is them, and makes them seem like they did die out. The Silvia however, argues that absence can facilitate the Persistence of Memory and significance. spaces created by communities getting their items back can provide such an absence. And I argue that museums should embrace these new absences created by repatriation so that anti colonial stories can be told, without the need to retain or display cultural items that perpetuate colonial violence and are often poorly interpreted. So this quote from Neil Curtis is about a temporary exhibition he curated in 2003, called going home museums and repatriation. And this was off the back of the Moorish shell museum where he was the curator, returning a sacred headdress to the horned society of the guy nation. The exhibition featured various sections that showed the story of the head dress, handover ceremony, repatriation debates elsewhere in the UK, and a discussion board that invited visitors to have their say, and Curtis reflected how comments by visitors were almost entirely favorable, such as all of humanity is connected to each other. And so glad to see this as a discussion, I knew very little about procedures and cases of repatriation. A more recent example of exhibiting absence is at the Pitt rivers Museum. They decided to move remove all human remains from display, including the sensor from South America, which the museum was famous for. Now, as you can see, in this image, they have purposely kept the case empty, which stands out amongst the profusion of material in the museum, and have used space to add the word racism into their interpretation, talk about how the previous curation was problematic. The decision to remove human remains from view and the repatriation processes that will now take place. So these examples indicate the anti colonial power of absence. And further evidence of this potential can be seen in a slightly different way, and the aftermath of the removal of colonial statues throughout the UK in the US in 2020, and 2021. Following the Black Lives Matter protests. These removals was different to repatriation and led by the public have already shown how the removal of objects that perpetuate for violence create opportunities for more powerful messaging. For example, this image shows a group of artists who have created the people's platform, which uses augmented reality to show alternative suggestions created by the public for what could take the place of Colston statue in Bristol. They've also generated a lot of public attention and debate on the difficult side objects that their removal highlighted. This shows what opportunity for growth change and something new the return of cultural items might have and what the future of museums could look like.
35:13
So embracing loss and exhibiting absence could dismantle and transform museum practice decentering the object would enable and move beyond the colonial gaze, and center the anti racist anti colonial stance in the post Museum. These spaces may be filled by interpretation written by the indigenous community themselves, becoming a space for truth telling and healing. These spaces will be people centered rather than object centered. And this embracing of loss would enable museums to start to move away from their colonial roots and disrupt Imperial nostalgia. So although I've been talking about museums and repatriation, I think that the theories and ideas behind my work are applicable to research in general, particularly within settings such as UK universities. If we cannot gain consent to extract then we cannot analyze, interpret or preserve this knowledge. And perhaps that is one of the most anti colonial approaches we can take as researchers, where we cannot extract and we embrace loss. That's where really exciting new work can happen. Innovation, should we create something new? Should we try to describe loss? Should we change topic or approach? And how can communities themselves utilize and tell their own truths in these spaces?
36:32
And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe. And join me next time where I'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between
Friday Sep 09, 2022
Friday Sep 09, 2022
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The seventh epsiode of the series will feature Laura Shobiye from Cardiff University and her talk 'Reflexive Positionality Researching Refugee Mothers as Radicalised Mother But Not Refugee.'
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription
00:09
Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest, about researchers development, and everything in between. Hello, and welcome to this the seventh episode of our series on decolonizing research. This episode features Laura shrubby from the University of Cardiff and her talk reflexive positionality, researching refugee mothers as a racialized mother, but not as a refugee.
00:51
I'm absolutely not, and would not call myself a decolonial, researcher, a decolonial, specialist, or anything along those lines, I think that it is a very complex area. And there are people that specialize in it and do it very well, that I have found very inspiring and that I have learned from. So my work is influenced, be by decolonial approaches, I'd like to think I'm taking some decolonial approaches, but I wouldn't put that label on how I've gone about everything at all. So if you hear things you don't quite fit or or you're not sure. That's partly partly why I've chosen to talk about positionality. Because this is something that I really reflected on in my work, and the title slide kind of gives away, why in a way that I found positionality a really interesting concept when I learned about it. But I really didn't know in some ways how to apply it to myself, and what it might mean for my work. And so had some learning to do, and continue to learn in that respect. And I've come to believe that like reflexive positionality, and in some research is well in all research. But in some in particular, it's really important. And for me, the reason why it was important was well, I'll talk you through that. But initially, just because I'm I'm part of a racialized minority, I'm a mother, I was researching with mothers. And but I was researching with mothers who are to keep the phrase short for now, from refugee backgrounds, which I'm not. So I think, all of us here with an interest in in decolonial research, potentially have that dilemma of how do I sit with, with the social group that I'm researching with my participants in the spaces that I'm going into for one reason or another, either because we are researching with our community, or we're aware that we're coming in as an outsider. But for me, it's a bit of both. So some of who I am, was really, really important. Yes, I was a researcher, a student, a doctoral researcher, but that is absolutely not the be all and end all of who I am. And it's definitely not who I've always been. And who when i Obviously I started the PhD, who I'd been for probably the shortest period of time in my life, compared to all my other identities and all the other characteristics that I have. And I didn't feel that I'd be going into those research spaces as just a researcher. My project is, as I'll talk about more is, is heavily qualitative, focused on subjective experiences. And so I had to think about my own subjective experiences and who I would be to my participants in those spaces, and and it would gatekeepers and who I was for myself as well. So I'm British, this isn't from London, but living in Cardiff. It sort of became more relevant as we went along. I'm a woman My wife and mother sister daughter, not a blacks mixed race. Dodgy typer. I am black mixed race. So Black Heritage, white as well. So mixed race. And I've taught ESL, to English to Speakers of Other Languages, I've taught English as a foreign language. So I've worked with migrant groups. I have
05:30
on the one side, a migrant background, although I was born a British citizen. And I've taught I've got PGCE qualification. I've also done project management, I have a whole load of other things and skill sets and and who I am. And I need to question do I bring that into my my research? Do I bring that into spaces where I'm doing research how much so and how much will come with me, whether I intend it to or not. And that's where reflexive positionality becomes really important. Because we may think one thing at the start, but as we go along, we need to be continually for me continually reflecting continually thinking. But all of that, for me matters in relation to who we're doing the research and for me who we're doing it with. So I was doing research with mothers, who were also asylum seekers, refugees, sanctuary seekers, force migrants displaced, sorry. And for those of you who don't know much about the asylum system, and immigration immigration systems, in the UK, I won't go into lots of detail on the terminology. But an asylum seeker is someone who enters the UK. For them, they're a refugee. And then they claim that they claim the right to refugee status through an asylum claim. So they're called an asylum seeker. It's a concept that does not exist in much of the world, in fact, much of the world, from where, from the areas where asylum seekers that reached the UK may have come from. And there are international conventions. And if I were not talking about positionality, today, I'd go into those in more detail. But in summary, international conventions, the same types of conventions that set up many various rights and international laws in the two or three, post Second World War decades, there is an international convention on refugees, often referred to as the Geneva Convention and a protocol that goes with it. And it's got the criteria for what should count as a refugee. It also enshrined in law, that right to claim asylum, absolutely. Everybody on the planet. According to that international law has the right to claim asylum. And you'd be granted asylum, on the other hand, on the grounds specific grounds in that convention to do with persecution, war, and so on. And in the UK, you may be granted asylum, and granted refugee status, which comes with leave to remain, which is usually five years now. But there are other outcomes. So that's not the only outcome, you may be granted permission to stay leave to remain, but you don't fit. The individual doesn't fit the criteria of the Refugee Convention and the UK legal systems interpretation of that. So then you might be granted humanitarian protection, discretionary leave to remain, and so on, or protection as a stateless person is particularly relevant. And why I've gone into this level of detail here for for women, because when the conventions were written, the fact that sexual violence is used as a tool of war wasn't, wasn't acknowledged or recognized. The consideration of an individual being in danger for reasons of their sex, or as it would have been seen, then I And for things such as domestic violence, again wasn't, wasn't really considered. So that is difficult to argue. Women are part of a social group. But if that whole social group isn't under threat or a large proportion of it, it's just that
10:18
that one woman as it were, it gets trickier. So, women in those types of situations may be granted another type of status. And which may be less than than five years leave to remain, there are generic terms or, or catch all terms because of these layers of complexity that get used. In Wales, which is where I conducted my research, sanctuary seekers, people seeking sanctuary is a term that is used to cover asylum seekers, refugees, anybody else who may need that, that protection and safety that sanctuary. Forced migrants is a term that is often used displaced persons, force migrants, some people love some really don't like and they get those other cat catch all for one of a better phrase terms are used for things such as climate change refugees, so we hear that expression now. But again, that that wasn't that's not a reason set climate change isn't a reason in in the international law. So in summary, to go back over all of those databases of waffled now, mothers, any any mother who says that she was seeking sanctuary is residing in Wales or was residing in Wales at the time that I was conducting my fieldwork in all of those aspects, that of self identifying I accepted participants truths, their identity and their immigration status. I it was, it's about their experiences, their perceptions, I wasn't about to check gender identities, I wasn't about to check claims of motherhood, nor was I going to ask for their legal documentation and go down the road of bordering with my research. So, but there was more more to that, that was those those three points were really effectively my my recruitment criteria, as it were. But there are other aspects to consider. They were visible and all Gristick minorities are for people who are racialized in the UK, they could be married, separated, single, divorced, widowed, they might be living with their children, they might be living separate from their children or some of their children. I did leave scope for for pregnant women. Or those who might be becoming mothers, by other means, student mums, working moms, they might be stay at home mums, which might be a choice or might have been their previous life or their current life. And that might be through choice or through enforced circumstances. All of these were things too, that I considered, that I knew were possibilities, but also that I found as I went along and learn about the women that agreed to participate in my research. So that is all really important for me, and I will continue to explain why in terms of reflexive positionality and the overall kind of overriding reasons why we're here today. And so it's kind of a question of what I was asking, What am I doing? Why am I doing it? So I have my own personal reasons for coming into this. No, it's no coincidence that I was a mother and I researched mothers. My research focusing on their educational and learning experiences, not a coincidence, I taught that I was a student, mother myself. And I'd worked with asylum seekers and refugees in the past teaching and as a volunteer on projects that had led me to a personal interest that had developed over time, but I really didn't want that personal interest to be that kind of that white gaze. So when I was then looking at that academic influences on my work and research kind of approaches, I'm really became informed by in summary Black and intersectional feminism and critical race theory.
15:07
black feminism intersectionality. Thank you, Kimberly Crenshaw, racial capitalism and theories of social reproduction within social capitalism as well. These are all relevant because they help explain the lens, the theoretical lens and the perspective. But overall, I was approaching my work through and looking at it through particularly, the more I did my initial reading, the position that British immigration policy is was, was and is both gendered, racist and racialized. I think, with the issues with Rwanda, and the questions that have come up with the treatment of Ukrainian refugees over others, I think that idea has become quite well accepted quite quickly, in some circles, but when I started my PhD, there were, in fact, I don't even know few months ago, there were people that would still still struggle to understand the structural systemic racism of the British immigration system. So I was looking at and I look at the experiences that women talk to me about through that lens. With that, I discovered decolonial approaches, and which I found relevant, because while there are the forms of model imperialism, which force people to flee from their homes, economic imperialism, political imperialism interference in other countries, the bombs that the US UK like to drop on places,
17:13
and then walk away from or
17:17
question why people are then fleeing from the linguistic colonialism that remains today, as a result of the full legal and political empire, with a legacy that much of the world speaks and learns English, which does have an impact on why asylum seekers may come to British shores. But it also had its impact on me. And why I'm only English and fluent and fluent in English, despite having one parent who wasn't only fluent in English. And the context of conducting a research in the UK where the vast majority of people don't speak more than one language fluently. Although in Wales, obviously, it's a by the UK is bilingual, but Wales bilingual nation. But I needed to consider that I wasn't expecting my participants to be able to speak Welsh, but that I would need to consider translation or interpretation or be conducting my research through the medium of English. It also again, coming back to that positionality and some of those things that I mentioned at the beginning about myself and about my participants was just acknowledging my own privilege as someone who has been a British citizen from birth, and my own potential risks of Savior ism, and that Savior Ristic voyeuristic approach that can be taken in research. And just because I'm from a racialized minority myself, doesn't mean that I'm incapable of being Savior stick. Some of this then also led me towards other methods for qualitative research, beyond observations and interview is dialogical interviews and looking at creative visual, participatory participatory action and collaborative methods. So those influences have led me to lead me to form kind of the overall shape of my approach. Direct, which is ethnographic. And it took me a long time, till quite recently to feel comfortable using that that word about my research because of some of the negative connotations associated with it. And to be sure that I perhaps had hadn't taken that voyeuristic extractive save your Ristic approach entirely. Qualitative, collaborative, longitudinal. And then multimodal, which is the the language and visuals, research. So my word supports more forms of expression and communication than just words, which I'll talk about more next week. I focused on both presenting and analyzing and use the word displaced but perspectives on educational experiences in Wales. I've tried my best to share stories, share voices and share. When I say their humanity as my participants. I haven't given them voices. They had voices already. And I'm not telling their stories. Hopefully, I'm I'm sharing them. And actually, today when I was checking the slides, I changed some wording that I'd used in the past, again continuing to reflect and it's a very humanizing people that have been dehumanized is how I would describe it in the past. But you know what? That in itself may start a started to make me feel a bit uncomfortable, but cloning realistic, perhaps I don't know the language but just sharing their humanity they would never dehumanize. That's something other people
22:06
have done to this group of women. I conducted my interviews, as mother to Mother conversations with creative methods, which I talk about more as I go along. I say Mother to Mother conversations. And, again, I'll touch upon this later. But because of the in my case, the particular perception of which my participants and gatekeepers have of the term interview. And I think when you're reflecting on your position, it's really important to consider the context of who you are, where you're doing your research, who you're doing with your research with where you're doing your research with. Me and I get in there with the thesis and papers, and multimodal, thematic and narrative presentation. And multi modal thematic and narrative analysis. So I've considered how I present my research, not just how I generate, I use the term generate not collect data, and how I analyze it. To me, it's an entire process end to end, and Western academic traditions. There's still a lot of work to be done there. I think in terms of decolonial ality, and the style in which academic work and academic research is presented. So what does all of that mean for my positionality? Well, really, it was mixed, like me, I have that is an intentional plan, in case you're wondering, and it was messy. So for those of you that have started to do some research, or reading around positionality, who know a little bit, there's debates around aren't you have an insider? Or are you an outsider? Are you a black woman researching black women for so an insider? Or are you a white man, researching black woman and therefore an outsider, and then it's not that straightforward for most. So what determines an insider what determines an outsider? Was I both with whom? When and where? And so if I was both was I both in the same ways at the same times in the same places? Was that consistent? Now it's was no, it was really mixed and messy. So to explain that I did my fieldwork in In refugee community and support groups, so yes, I've used the term refugee but again for that for all sanctuary seekers, their support groups, community support groups, women's groups, in particular, and they did that around Wales. For someone who claims asylum in the UK, if they and they need support to VAs vas 90 or percent do financial support, then they are displaced, which means they are sent with no choice to anywhere around the country to dispersal areas. At the time I was doing my work Wales had for the dispersal system is it changing, particularly in Wales in terms of how many there are, but that's how it was set up. And then for those who come through schemes like the Syrian voluntary resettlement program, or the Afghanistan one, and they are, are sent to other areas, so not dispersal areas. The idea of this came with the 1999 Immigration Act and you labor to spread the burden, lovely term. So that it's not wasn't just London and the Southeast and poor areas that we're we're getting the majority of asylum seekers. And that's how the majority of sanctuary seekers come to the UK now, it is as individual asylum seekers, not through schemes. So I traveled around Wales to the four dispersal areas and another area and spent time in these groups. But each part of Wales each of these four cities, has its slightly different makeup has different proportions of the asylum seekers and refugees population in Wales. So, but half are in Cardiff, which is the most diverse city in Wales versus Wrexham, which only has about 5% of asylum seekers dispersed there. And it's a very white population. So yes, that made a difference. To be honest, there also, I am in Cardiff. So some of those groups I spent time in, I took my children to I volunteered in and I just spent time hanging out as just another person there. Others I couldn't get to on such a regular basis. So I went for the purpose of, of generating data, of interviewing participants. But I also tried to spend time just on those visits, just hanging out as it were, as well. And, obviously, I was able to go to women's groups, because I'm a woman. So in that respect, I was an insider, they were run by women, they were attended by women in some of the spaces. They were centers and location where it wasn't just women present. But I tended to be in the room or in the group or there at the time that was dedicated to women or women and children. And I'm visit visibly black, or brown, depending on people's interpretation. And, and a mother and I took my children. So I was visibly a mother, where I didn't take my children to talk about that in a bit. I did make myself visibly a mother, but also audibly British. And I was talking about this earlier today, in some of those spaces. In Wales, where the population is 95% White in those spaces, it was assumed more than once that I was there as an asylum seeker or refugee. Which was interesting. And I don't think unimportant, I think it helped gatekeepers feel more comfortable with me. Arguably, it helped some of the women feel more comfortably comfortable with me, and we could talk about issues of race as well as motherhood and womanhood. But I was also British talking to people with very, very precarious legal immigration status while I have a very, very certain one.
29:53
So I've talked about some of this already, and that in some of my spaces, some of the spaces my status wasn't clear you immediately, and in some it was, and in some, it wasn't. In some it was perhaps unclear. But I didn't try and hide who I was, I was very honest and open open. And at times, I would be in some spaces as just a woman and a mother, a member of the local community joining in. And other times I was there, as the researcher, or flitting between the two and at sign times, I was both, I was in the space as both. And so it wasn't Not, not at all. clear cut. I'm just gonna check. Yeah. So on the right hand side of these slides, you can see that I've got a little clipboard. And I'm going to whiz through now some of the last slides. So I've been talking too much and give a chance for some questions. So what some of this mean, in terms of the practical realities of of how I went about things. So I had, as I said, that deliberate contextual ethical distinction from other forms of interviews, that asylum seekers and refugees may have gone through journalists, perhaps home office interrogations, police interviews in the UK or elsewhere. And that was really important. And I wouldn't have been allowed into one space by one gatekeeper if I hadn't made that distinction. And that I was coming in, as a woman and as a mother, to speak to women and mothers. In that regard, in that way, mother to mother not to go through a list of questions and interrogate. Now, for me, this was really important because I wasn't there to extract data, or extract information, I was having a dialogue kind of conversation with them. So but having a chat over a cuppa, for one of a better analogy, and sometimes quite literally, if it was in a space where I hadn't taken my children, I might introduce myself as a researcher, yes, but also as a mother and show photos of my, of my kids on my phone, they might show me photos of theirs or call their children over and chat with them. That rapport was built so that I could have that dialogue with them, not to fake friendship. And there is a literature that that discusses that. But to to build that rapport and have that dialogue that is, was conversing with with empathize, sympathize, we laugh together a lot, I laughed a lot in interviews with women. And I've maintained friendly contact between interviews, as I was planning a longitudinal, I say planning, because the pandemic got in the way, but I was planning a longitudinal piece of research, which meant I would be returning to the women to ask them if they want were willing to speak with me again. So I'm in contact contact in between. Again, if I'm you know, honest, there's there's something for me as the researcher alone to gain from that making sure I've not lost participants, but also is not being that extractive here I turn up when I want something from you and only then do you hear from me type approach and continuing that consideration so as I said, I generated generated data with my participants, not from them. So dialogue with them, they drew you can see some of the joints here. I provided the materials and they did the drawings with them for like photo elicitation. So that's with them. They chose the photos, they gave the description. I then edited photos later, and they approved my editing.
34:30
The photos were particularly important with the impact of the pandemic as I moved to remote methods and chose not to continue with such an a focus on interviewing because it didn't feel ethically okay. I chosen to go into women's spaces and take myself into their spaces, not bring them into mine. Because ethically that felt the right thing to due for their comfort for their report or for their well being in case they disclose things and got upset or distressed, I didn't feel I could do any of that. In the same way while working remotely, I didn't feel I could hang up the phone and leave potentially a distressed woman and not know what might have happened, that she might be on her own, she might have a children with her, they hear some of it should my children hear some of it, as well as digital exclusion reasons. So the photographs became more important. So I was hoping to collaborate and I tried to collaborate, but without putting a heavy burden of labor on my participants, so and different people will take different approaches to this. But for me, I can't pay asylum seekers, I didn't have the budget to pay people anyway. And I didn't want to be asking a lot of time and labor from women. I felt that would feel unfair. But neither did I want to be extractive so is that that balancing ground that I constantly and again, constantly considering my positionality, and how best to do that, to be collaborative to continue that contact and check ins get their approval through the photo editing worked, or I created visual digital stories as a little mini visual story at the top there. Where they were created of individual narratives and stories, they were pre approved, again by the individual participant, so done with them. That with me taking the burden of labor. So I had the privilege of time and funding to be able to do this work doesn't always feel like it as a PhD student that you've got time or or money. Not everybody has funding, of course. But I did. Whatever we think of the levelers of stipends. I could empathize with the women and as a mother, but I had an experience of seeking sanctuary in Wales or being coming from refugee background. I was trusted, I am trusted, as a mother of respected as a researcher. But is it always that way round. And I made mistakes, because I don't share experiences. And that privilege, comes with the thoughts of power imbalances. And I did have one to one interviewing where the power balance felt very wrong. I was there to get information to use that explore extractive type phrase. But really, this was a woman who was only speaking to me because she was desperate, desperate, being the right word for information. So I help provide that information and have not included, cut the interview short, and if not included that in my work. And again, continuing to consider my positionality why the woman at a speed agreed to speak with me what she hoped to get from me from what she knew of me and who I was and why I was there. And I skim this a little bit, just to say I had some, some really wonderful feedback. There are next several difficulties, but someone telling me I'm so glad you're doing this, some of them even reflecting me in their creative methods. So on this image here on the right, I'm represented by the lines of jewels at the bottom. And she's represented her family through the rest of the jewelry. So quite touched by that and we're still in touch. Women saying I'm inspiring to them, can't say I necessarily would agree. But equally, I felt that the other way around. I felt that some of the women were really inspiring to me. Some of the women agreed to talk with me wanting to learn more about what's all involved, but that felt more
39:27
equal than the or more better balanced for one of a better term actually, than the situation I described before. And I was definitely able to gain access to spaces as I said before, because of who I am, not just because I'm a researcher and and I was able to build a rapport and friendships in ways that a man maybe even a white woman might not have been able to And yes, I did make friendships. And that's something I can can discuss later. That's something that people do consider the boundaries of. But these aren't things are not positive, unless I was an ethically responsible, which means continuing to reflect on my positionality. So should I be doing this this research? No, I'm not if I don't have that asylum seeking refugee background, am I the right person to be doing this? And how can I use the privileges that I do have? And the experiences that that, that I have both of of that relative privilege, but also of the discrimination and difficulties that I have faced as a, as a black Miss mixed race, woman Mother, how can I use those to support to amplify and to liberate, not to consider that I'm saving or that I'm speaking for, or that I'm discovering? Considering that presentation, and representation matter? And they really do, but when I'm not representative in an always on again, is that possible? Of the group that I'm researching with? How do I achieve that? And I've done that through some of my more visual and collaborative weights, the ethics of anonymization. And I talked about more about this next week, but particularly with photographs of people, and whether anonymizing is disempowering. And allowing people to real names to be used is liberating. And whether there are times as a researcher whether you need to decide for your participants or is that infantilizing. No straightforward answers. And in case anyone's wondering, I kept anonymized everything anonymized for various reasons. And this is a doctoral event. So in within the academy even, but also elsewhere, that racism isn't only about phenotypes. It's relevant for my positionality. It was relevant for my permissive, epistemological framework, relevant for my participants, they might be white, as it were, visibly, but maybe still racialized, based on their accent, their first language, their immigration status in particular. And this was deeply relevant, as I said, for my approach.
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And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe. And join me next time where I'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between.
Thursday Sep 08, 2022
Thursday Sep 08, 2022
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The sixth epsiode of the series will feature Amy Shakespeare and Deborah Ashfield from the University of Exeter and their talk 'Refusing extraction embracing loss: Towards an anticolonial politics of absence.'
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription
00:09
Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development, and everything in between.
00:32
So, hi, everyone. I'm Amy Shakespeare, and this is my colleague, Deborah Ashfield. And we're going to be presenting together today, we're both first year PhD students at the University of Exeter's Penryn campus. And we wanted to do something for the decolonizing Research Festival. And we're originally kind of thinking of doing separate presentations or workshops. But then we realized sort of how much overlap there actually is between our seemingly different research interests. So I'm based in the history department, and Deborah is based in the English department. So I just kind of wanted to caveat today's presentation by saying that it's very much a work in progress. It's very kind of experimental and drawing the two things together and seeing how they sort of work in dialogue with each other. And so we're just trialing some ideas here today. And we're really grateful that you're kind of here to join us for that. And we'd very much welcome any feedback that you have, or any sort of thoughts that it sparks for yourselves. And we're hoping to leave some time to open up the discussion at the end of the session for us all to think about extraction, and last and absence within our own work. And they'll also be time for questions, but do feel free as we're going through to pop questions in the chat. And then maybe we can kind of have more of a unmute and, and free for all at the end. So
02:16
yeah, so we're going to be talking a little bit over kind of force of the next half an hour, 45 minutes, between jumping between ourselves and then opening out to everyone else to join in, we're going to start off talking about kind of some of the differences between terms like decolonizing, and decolonial. What kind of nuances and politics and differences kind of in between, between those two terms are. Then I'm going to move into talking a little bit about extraction and the refusal extraction. So I'm going to be talking a bit about extractive research practices and how these relate to extractive colonialism, colonialism. And then we're going to be thinking a bit about connections between anti extractivism and anti colonialism and research. Then Amy's gonna be chatting a bit about the role of loss in relation to her research, which looks at repatriation, from UK museums to indigenous communities, and so called Canada. And then she's going to be thing, she's going to be talking a bit about the kind of the potential absence and what the absence is left by spaces might mean and what kind of possibilities that might lie there. Particularly in terms of anticolonial practice and spaces.
03:51
Yeah, so that's kind of, as Deb said, an overview. We wanted to start by just asking whether you sort of can use a reaction or the hands up function. Do you consider your work to be decolonial or decolonizing? So yeah, just do either a thumbs up reaction if you do or the hands up. Okay, so got a couple. Great, so a few people do. Brilliant. And now we wanted to ask, do you consider your work to be anti colonial? And the same thing again? One, two, okay. So fairly even split between decolonial anti colonial, which is really interesting. So, you may be familiar with this article from Turkey. And young decolonization is not a metaphor. But we really wanted to sort of introduce a few key quotes from the article to start today's session off. Both Deborah and I use the term anticolonial, rather than decolonial. And tackling Yanga and a few others have been key to us both separately, I should say, but both coming to that conclusion. And it might seem like semantics, but actually, there's really kind of powerful meaning behind the term decolonization and so as this quote says, decolonization brings about the repatriation of indigenous land and life, it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. So we can see here that that message is very much about land back and life back. And so thinking about how does can research be decolonial? Or is there another word like anticolonial, that might fill that space better?
06:12
And so yeah, talk to me and go on to talk about this trend noticed, which we'll kind of all be familiar with. And they say when one trend that we've noticed with growing apprehension is the ease with which the language of decolonization has been superficially adopted into education and other social sciences, supplanting prior ways of talking about social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches, which approaches which dissenter, dissenter settler perspectives. And this is, it's like a really kind of key message that runs through their their art article is that decolonization isn't a synonym for diversification or for inclusion, or for kind of the many, like, really, like really important kind of like social justice oriented, anti racist, kind of work, and critical methods. And pedagogies that happened in university spaces. And so they kind of, yeah, they just are, they push on this this term, decolonial and decolonizing, and the ways that it's been adopted into the university, and it's used in university spaces, in kind of really interesting ways that yeah, kind of unsettle some of the ways that kind of, we're trained to think about what decolonize what decolonization is, and means.
07:41
Yeah, and then this final quote, that we've picked out, kind of alludes to what Debs was just talking about, in terms of, even if the work that we're doing is out, you know, outrightly clearly anti racist, even if it's for social justice, or critical of what's gone before, this harm that the term can do in terms of, you know, killing the possibility of decolonization, really centering whiteness, thinking about that sort of white guilt, and that sort of idea of, of the Savior as well. I think that, that adoption of the term decolonization plays into all of those things, and can be quite problematic. So we just really wanted to start with that, as I say, to kind of outline why we'll be talking in terms of anti colonial you know, it's not without its own critiques, which I think Deborah's gonna go on to talk about, but just really outlining that difference, and, and why we're making it. So yeah, I'm gonna hand it over to Deborah now to talk about extraction and extractivism.
08:57
Hi, yeah, so um, I just kind of as a kind of as a little bit of preamble pre blurb, I work kind of between contemporary poetry studies, soundscape studies, critical technology studies bioacoustics, kind of broadly under the Environmental Humanities, umbrella. And I, but today, I'm going to be talking mainly about reading and reading methods more generally. And the place of practicing refusal and retooling in relation to extractive research logics and extractive reading practices. I yeah, I work on poetry mainly. So reading and close reading in particular is fairly central in terms of methods that I use. So what I'm going to be talking about in the next kind of 15 minutes or so it's kind of an experimental live bibliography, or sort of process of walking back through and with some of the texts, thinkers, tools, complications and tensions that are continually structuring and dissolving the structure of my practice. Yeah, so I work on extractivism. And particularly in my research, I think a lot about the ways in which looking out for and paying attention to the tendencies towards extractivism. And extractive logics in research methods and practices can give us information about where the worn habits of colonialism, conquest etcetera, reside and take root in our disciplinary and interdisciplinary methods and practices. So, what do we mean when we talk about extractivism? In these terms? Is it different from extraction? How does it manifest in the modern university in teaching and research? What does it mean to be anti extractive and how does all of this relate to colonialism, colonialism and the practice of carrying out anti colonial research or using anti colonial methodologies and you can get to the next slide. Thank you. So, let's begin with some definitions. Etymologically the verb to extract comes from the Latin extra hearing to draw out the term moved into popular circulation in the late 16th, early 17th centuries, and kind of quickly came to signify the often violent process of getting out the contents of anything by force, taking out anything embedded or firmly fixed, also refers to the process of taking from something of which the thing taken was a part. In early you said and still now it revert it refers to various processes of kind of obtaining constituent elements, juicers, etc, from a thing or substance by suction pressure, distillation, or any chemical or mechanical operation, both personal and material agents. So the employment of these various forms of force as a means for assuming access to so called resources, is an ongoing Pologne act, enactment of colonial and capitalist logics that rely upon self maximization and profit as justification for harm. However, I argue, in my work alongside many others, that the problem of extraction and extractivism doesn't necessarily begin and end with whether or not harm and damage are immediately visible, or perceptible as a result of the process of extraction. My project begins when the position and ethic of obligation and reciprocity must replace an extractive model an extractive knowledge economy, in order for, in order to produce knowledge in ways that stand up outside the logics that govern the colonial academic industrial complex. So I'm, I'm entangled with, obviously, we all are, and working within the parameters of this well established, dominant Western New colonial system of knowledge production. And it's therefore inevitable in my project that I'm inadvertently reproducing some of the assumptions and violence is that it's awesome. But I'm also hoping to kind of diagnose and interrupt and in a third University as possible, which is an amazing text, by the way, thoroughly recommend it. The person puts this split obligation really well in his discussions of the ways in which the first, second and third universities, of which the dynamic between the three he explains really well, and I recommend going and reading it.
13:34
Yeah, he explains this split obligation between the three universities which are all coexisting in a kind of constantly malfunctioning machine or assemblage of knowledge and practices. So he says, regardless of its kind of colonial structure, because school or the university is an assemblage of machines, and not a monolithic institution, its machinery is always being subverted towards decolonizing purposes. The bits of machinery that make up the decolonizing University are driven by decolonial desires with decolonizing dreamers who are subversively part of the machinery and part machine themselves. So I'm talking about in terms of the split obligations. These subversive beings wreak scavenge, retool and reassemble the colonizing university into decolonizing contractions. They're cyborgs with a decolonizing desire, you might choose to be one of them. In the third University, which is also inside of the first and second universities. The tools and methods owned by the first university are susceptible to being co opted to anti colonial abolitionist post disciplinary, creative and laboratory and due to my projects focus on taking and interrogating the extractive and colonial origins, uses and entanglements of various tools. methods between the sciences and the humanities. I work kind of in soundscape study. So I think a lot about hydrophones underwater microphones in relation to kind of close reading methods in the humanities. Le pathosans text here provides powerfully grounding ways in which to envisage how this kind of CO option of tools might be enacted as participation in an ongoing collaborative interdisciplinary transnational and trans historical practice of refusing the extractive logics of the first and second universities. Often though, these logics of extractivism and automatic access might not be immediately or obviously identifiable as such. Often they're veiled by suggestions of environmental goods, benevolence, in essence, care. But care in itself can be violent care can be a violation. Our work as Catherine McKittrick puts it so brilliantly can you go to the next sliding? Thank you. Work as Catherine McKenna, McKittrick puts it so brilliantly in data science and other stories to another key kind of methodological texts for my project is to notice this logic, your recursive logic that depicts our presently Ecocide or in genocide or wild as normal and unalterable and breach it. dislodging by biocentric system of knowledge and showing that the natural sciences the humanities and the social sciences are when thought together generative sites of inquiry. One way in which McKittrick suggests doing this noticings breaching of colonial logics is through attention to the politics of citation are our bibliographies extractive did they reproduce the same colonial logics that structure so much of our learning and teaching in the modern Western University. McKittrick calls out how sometimes citation practices do not take the time to feel and recognize liberation. Sometimes referencing signals illusion rather than study. This image of a work cited page containing references to books chapters, articles have been skim read. For neat confirming quotations. Best was kind of all too familiar when I first came across it. Reading McKittrick, I was reminded of and convicted by the ways in which the academy continues to teach and reward deeply colonial acts of extractivism and reading and the ways in which these practices of extractive reading have real material effects.
18:00
are in the waiting room and I've been steadily picked?
18:03
Go back to the one before. Yeah, perfect. So McKittrick offers an alternative, then a sort of next one. Sorry. McKittrick offers an alternative. She says What if the practice of referencing sourcing and crediting is always bursting with intellectual life and takes us outside ourselves? What if we read outside ourselves not for ourselves but to actively or know ourselves? to unhinge enough to come to know each other intellectually, inside and outside the academy Academy, as collaborators have generous and of collective and generous and capacious stories. So I hope that by refusing the logics of unit directionality in reading, automatic access, consumption, possession, and self maximization that characterize these colonial macho modes of knowledge production, but we're also well acquainted with, we remain accountable to and engage in other kinds of readerly possibilities and intertextual relationships. These relationships Well, I hope, expand already do extend beyond the confines of extractive so called objective academic reading and research economies and towards practices of accountability, specificity, reciprocity, caution and exchange. These four melodics of extractivism and objectivity are characteristic of what Max libera on in their book pollution is colonialism and other texts which has been foundational to establishing my methodological and theoretical frameworks as well as my citation on politics has called Resource relations. We can move on to the next one. That's okay. Thank you. Part of how LeBron theorizes really resource relations doesn't necessarily travel Allow from the island of Newfoundland on the ancestral traditional homelands of the Baytech unseeded ancestral traditional lands of the Baytech in so called Canada, to the UK, where I am liberal unexplained resource relations, as referring to the morality of maximum use of resources, dispossession and property as a way to control both time and space to secure settler and colonial futures. Because the province of Newfoundland and Labrador exists in the broader context of a settler state and Canada, its relationship to colonialism is different to here in the UK at the former heart of empire, though the two places are closely entangled with each other. The ways in which colonialism functions and persist in these spaces is different and bears different consequences. However, the concept of resource relations itself is still extremely useful and instructive here. And particularly for talking about how to read in a different kind of relation that isn't consumptive, violent or extractive. This is especially important when engaging with the work of those whose ideas and knowledge have historically been othered left out CO opted, stolen, or overwritten in time in favor of maintaining the colonial Imperial, gendered and racialized status quo in the academy. Elsewhere Libran discusses continues discussions of resource relations and extractive knowledge economies in specific terms relating to reading practices in academic work and writing. The social into an intellectual stakes surrounding these kinds of obligations they explain are high, they particularly talk about me guess next slide, okay. They particularly talk about the ways in which the norms of value and valuation that underlie how we are taught to read and write are also the ones that force us out of academic pipeline pipelines and into trauma. In addition to the social stakes, there are intellectual stakes. The problem with one way extractive transmission of knowledge is that the way knowledge is transmitted, acutely affects the type of knowledge transmitted, extractive reading can only result in one kind of knowledge transmission acquisition, working simultaneously inside of and and against a system that profits from extractive reading and citation of economies the academy and alternative reading and citation practice that notices and offers clues. On potential methods for working towards an economy of reciprocity is vital. These practices include proper relational debt, generous, citation, annotation, deep engagement, time span, and more.
23:01
Work working within this concept of reading within an ethic of reciprocity, rather than in an economy of extractivism. The reader is required to acknowledge that being in relation with and to a text and its authors, crucially outside of kind of one's own head. These practices of embracing the the refusal of extractive research methods and specifically extractive reading relations have slowed me down considerably in the best ways, and forced me to reckon with the usual pushes towards long, tight, comprehensive bibliographies. Illuminating the colonial capitalist and self maximizing performativity, they'll enter these urges when these bibliographies are constructed on the basis of kind of skim reading, and extractive reading. Embracing this refusal has caused me to pause and refrain when the instinct cuts in to add a reference for a text that I'm not yet well enough acquainted with. This is a practice of refusal in progress in process and constantly under review.
24:16
isn't me? Yes. Yeah. So kind of going on. From Deborah, my work, as I said, at the beginning might seem quite different. But hopefully, as we go through, it'll become clearer why we've linked them. So what happens when we do refuse extraction led me to thinking about what happens when we can't preserve everything in museums, the tendency is, you know, extract, collect, preserve, and even today with kind of contemporary collecting that museums are pushed to do, that is what they will do. You know, for example, in the Black Lives Matters, protests happen And they went out, they took the placards, put them in their collection, what is the next move. So we might not be able to extract because we're using anti colonial methodologies or for sustainability reasons or accepting that consent has not been given or maybe taken away. And this is kind of where our research starts to overlap. So I look at the anti colonial spaces left by the return of cultural items, from youth head museums to indigenous communities a couple of decades ago, and even up until relatively recently, one of the repeated arguments against repatriation was that it might lead it would lead to a so called slippery slope, and UK museums would empty. Now that might tell you how much isn't UK museums that shouldn't be. But it's also plainly not true, both because not everything in museums as stolen. And because communities often don't want or can't accommodate having everything back that has been stolen. And I'm still grappling with the word loss as it has such negative connotations. In most instances, museum teams today are pleased when a repatriation occurs, meaning that an item can be back with its rightful community. But I'm finding that there's still this element of saying goodbye of curators letting go of something that they believe it's their duty to care for, of a loss. And so I'm looking at different ways museums prepare for this loss and how some choose to embrace it. So I'm focusing on these spaces both metaphorical and physical, that would be left by items that had been returned, and what the potential for those spaces are. Some curators are keen on ethically purchasing contemporary art from the community that they have returned items to, however, you can then end up with more extraction, or with contemporary pieces from communities still being poorly interpreted, or like the vast majority of items being hidden inside storage facilities in perpetuity. And museums have continually collected objects to tell more stories about people and events and can now be described as agencies for managing profusion. However, there are often gaps in collections that being museums supposedly do not have the objects to tell the stories that they want to, or that they can avoid telling truthful stories of colonialism. And this can mean that themes or issues are missed out of exhibitions. So essentially, by putting artifacts at the center of exhibition, it limits the issues available for discussion. Equally, objects that the museums know little about tend to remain neglected. And many museums try to rearrange objects around absence or collect or create new objects to fill gaps. So to Sylvie talks about how there is this persistent museological assumption that the meaning if a sense of an artifact can best be sustained by securing its physical permanence, and this idea of conservation and securing permanence, as I've said, is extraction in and of itself, is a colonial idea that harks back to the formation of many museums in the Victorian era, the false idea and justification that indigenous people were dying out, and therefore their items needed to be preserved for future generations. Coupled with this, continuing to collect fuels a fundamental problem with museum practice and conservation, which is the fact that museums have become completely unsustainable, due to their storage facilities bursting full of collections that never see the light of day. But as the Silvie writes, on the flip side of this, museums often feel that loss equals erasure, to syllabi concludes that the act of saving something means we become implicated in its biography, once you have this intrinsic link to lose that item would be to lose our identities to. So I believe that the fear around repatriation is the idea of losing our colonial identities, losing that Imperial nostalgia, and there's anxiety associated with that surrender.
29:18
Many museums like universities are seeking to decolonize but as Deborah has just talked about, what about when this permanence comes at a cost of extraction, when this item was never meant to be permanent, never meant to be preserved? Or when our preservation of something suffocates or kills a living being? What does this mean for anticolonial practice? And Harrison someone's drilling? Harrison wrote that there is an acceptance that new ways of carrying collecting, curating and communicating the values of heritage must be conceived to accept the inevitability of change, that everything cannot be extracted, saved and preserved and to move away From traditional conservation, I'm just going to close my window to see if that helps.
30:11
So I'm really interested in this provocation made last month that a brilliant event, which I believe was recorded and is or will be available online. This was from zooming qu who asked, what is the non colonial word for conservation. And I've changed that as to what is the anti colonial word for conservation. Seeming was talking about scientific and ecological conservation being a means to continue Imperial resource extraction. But I think that you can make an argument that heritage conservation, and indeed resource rate sorry, and indeed, research is also a means to continue Imperial resource extraction. And this idea of ethically conducting contemporary art to fill the space of repatriated items feeds into that. So rather than looking at ways to fill these spaces with more items, I follow the absence, I look at the spaces left by or awaiting the return of cultural items. And I argue that within this absence, anti colonial practice can be found. The problematic nature of the display of objects is becoming clearer as museums seek to decolonize. But absence has usually been viewed as negative and museums faces. The idea that and rightly so if an if a community were absent from an archive they weren't represented. For instance, Tally talks about the act of absence thing, where museums choose not to display or not to act session objects into their collection, showing how the museum instead of documenting heritage actually produces its own heritage. And this has linked to the idea of Imperial nostalgia, where museums are places where colonialism is historicized, and glorified. On top of this, you often find that in the interpretation of indigenous items, still today, those communities are talked about in the past tense. So where there is a presence of objects, there is still an absent thing of the communities and absence that historicize is them, and makes them seem like they did die out. The Silvia however, argues that absence can facilitate the Persistence of Memory and significance. spaces created by communities getting their items back can provide such an absence. And I argue that museums should embrace these new absences created by repatriation so that anti colonial stories can be told, without the need to retain or display cultural items that perpetuate colonial violence and are often poorly interpreted. So this quote from Neil Curtis is about a temporary exhibition he curated in 2003, called going home museums and repatriation. And this was off the back of the Moorish shell museum where he was the curator, returning a sacred headdress to the horned society of the guy nation. The exhibition featured various sections that showed the story of the head dress, handover ceremony, repatriation debates elsewhere in the UK, and a discussion board that invited visitors to have their say, and Curtis reflected how comments by visitors were almost entirely favorable, such as all of humanity is connected to each other. And so glad to see this as a discussion, I knew very little about procedures and cases of repatriation. A more recent example of exhibiting absence is at the Pitt rivers Museum. They decided to move remove all human remains from display, including the sensor from South America, which the museum was famous for. Now, as you can see, in this image, they have purposely kept the case empty, which stands out amongst the profusion of material in the museum, and have used space to add the word racism into their interpretation, talk about how the previous curation was problematic. The decision to remove human remains from view and the repatriation processes that will now take place. So these examples indicate the anti colonial power of absence. And further evidence of this potential can be seen in a slightly different way, and the aftermath of the removal of colonial statues throughout the UK in the US in 2020, and 2021. Following the Black Lives Matter protests. These removals was different to repatriation and led by the public have already shown how the removal of objects that perpetuate for violence create opportunities for more powerful messaging. For example, this image shows a group of artists who have created the people's platform, which uses augmented reality to show alternative suggestions created by the public for what could take the place of Colston statue in Bristol. They've also generated a lot of public attention and debate on the difficult side objects that their removal highlighted. This shows what opportunity for growth change and something new the return of cultural items might have and what the future of museums could look like.
35:13
So embracing loss and exhibiting absence could dismantle and transform museum practice decentering the object would enable and move beyond the colonial gaze, and center the anti racist anti colonial stance in the post Museum. These spaces may be filled by interpretation written by the indigenous community themselves, becoming a space for truth telling and healing. These spaces will be people centered rather than object centered. And this embracing of loss would enable museums to start to move away from their colonial roots and disrupt Imperial nostalgia. So although I've been talking about museums and repatriation, I think that the theories and ideas behind my work are applicable to research in general, particularly within settings such as UK universities. If we cannot gain consent to extract then we cannot analyze, interpret or preserve this knowledge. And perhaps that is one of the most anti colonial approaches we can take as researchers, where we cannot extract and we embrace loss. That's where really exciting new work can happen. Innovation, should we create something new? Should we try to describe loss? Should we change topic or approach? And how can communities themselves utilize and tell their own truths in these spaces?
36:32
And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe. And join me next time where I'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The fifth epsiode of the series will feature Pankhuri Singh from the University of Exeter and her talk 'Culture across borders'.
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription
00:09
Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development, and everything in between.
00:32
And today I'll be talking about cultural cross borders. Hello, everyone. My name is Pankaj Singh. I'm a second year PhD student in the Department of English and film studies. Now, what exactly is decolonization? decolonization is the process in which a country that was formerly a colony that was colonized by imperialism or by a par, they they go away and they make that country independent and they lose the stop controlling that country and that country becomes independent internal, this is the process of decolonization. Now, India became independent from the British Empire on the 15th of August 1947. Do it became a republic, it decided to be a part of the Commonwealth of Nations. Hence, it did not severe away all the ties from the British Empire by being part of the Commonwealth nations it accepted the honorary monarchy being being a part of the Indian constitution and in I'm sorry, not the Indian constitution, but of the Indian public in in, in the general terms, not talking a little bit about what the history of India and the UK share is, trade was established between two ringland and Mughal India in the 1600s. When elicited when Elizabeth to one granted the newly formed in East India Company Royal Charter by sending precious gifts to the Mughal court, Emperor of Akbar the trend following the Indian rebellion of 1857. When Indian sepoys rebelled against the British officers, the East India Company was dissolved. The assets of the British East India Company was so huge that the British government decided to step in, and after a series of military encounters established British dominion over India. Later, the English sought to consolidate their political control by taking responsibility to improve the lot of the masses by imparting modern Western education. They took over on themselves which is dubbed as the White Man's Burden, they took over that responsibility of making the Indian masses of socially religiously, morally economically, better human beings. A part of this being Lord Macaulay is minute on Indian education, which came out in the 18 clitic farm. He wanted to establish a class of persons Indian and blood and color, but English and taste, opinion, morals and intellect. According to him, these people would act as intermediaries between the British rulers and the masses that they were to. Indians, however, welcome this decision with open arms. They had their own perceived notions that this charter this minute would help them it was not just the freedom fighters, but also the social reformers who saw the benefits of this plan and how it would work in their own favor. reformers like Raja Ram and Ravi and others crap the opportunity to do away with the dogmatic and Orthodox religious rights, when they realized that is new scientific approach would be important to the Indian education and they would realize that these religions rights were dogmatic and not really something that should be followed. Similarly, the freedom fighters to grab this opportunity and part of collaborating with each other, from different parts of the country to to
04:39
to move forward the nationalist independence movement. Now why was that? It was because India was and still continues to be multilingual. It has 22 languages recognized in the HTML of the Indian constitution, and when Broadmoor collies minute came into being ink, then English became the lingua franca and freedom writers from across regions could actually connect and plans that would work for the very downfall of the British Empire that that brought home that had brought this English language into the country. While all of this was going on in the political front, in the literary front, Shakespeare as a playwright began to gain popularity he's his stories of creed, part, revenge and jealousy, the times and the new no borders. Even after independence, Indians continued to like his filmmakers took an opportunity to make films that were based on Shakespeare's plots. And they thought that his plots were timeless and they could actually adapt to them to the Indian culture. This brings me to my research topic, which is how paraglide trans culturally adapted to Elizabeth and drama to the Indian setting. Today, I will be talking about how the Elizabethan drama written by William Shakespeare in 16 104 that is Othello gets adapted into Ankara, which was a film that released in the year 2006. Cannot be bounded by geographical borders, the emotions of discontentment, jealousy, insecurity, are felt by all residing in any part of the world. Ha replied to spank on the Shakespearean play, and takes pride in being associated with the writer who wrote for the teaching, which ruled his country for centuries. The filmmaker however, does not blindly transform the Elizabethton play of Shakespeare into a film. Rather he adds the elements of Indian Ness in it, which makes the adaptation a unique process he adds in Hindu mythic elements and other features that are exclusive to India. The chief point of the play will tell you is that Otello belongs to a different race than Desdemona, the counterpart the female counterpart. This gets trans culturally adapted in the Indian setting, but how to judge many banks on the emotion of jealousy and insecurity. He bases his film on the very inhibition, which also happens to be a very famous Hindi dialogue in the Bollywood cinema, that a girl and a boy can never be just friends. This inhibition was the root cause for Omkara jealousy and the belief that dolly Desdemona might have cheated on him with case that is Casio. While in the play, Iago makes Roger equal believe that Desdemona loves Casio, he says that they have the same appearance and that will tell you is stop that bringing in the disparity of talent between the levels. In the film this gets adapted when dolly and que su are seeing together and they seem compatible, because they share the same educational background. The the, the issue of caste, the issue of column, never find the mention it is because they will educate together that they become compatible, thereby making Ankara jealous and insecure, that he is approved, and therefore, he is not as in par with the case who as he would have been had he been Western or modern educated. The second method of adapting the play is when Bhardwaj reimagined the character of into the Indian counterpart for Amelia, making her vengeful at Carly, who kills her husband Lambert yaki, the Iago figure for the misdeeds he had done. Thus, Bhardwaj birdwatcher takes a significant departure from the text, because while in the play immediate dies at the hands of Thiago and that is how we see that that's how Amelia is not really able to stand up for Desdemona. Into however, becomes the avenging mother who dresses the wrongs done to her.
09:41
Not only her but also broadly, who she thinks to be her younger sister, or her child. The name into means moon and according to the Hindu mythology, the moon protects the inhabitants of the earth in in the night from the evil forces that look in the dark similarly, in the two dresses the drums metadata and Dolly balandra and the scenes take place in the light rail into as a protector of the good forces fight against the evil forces, which here are represented in Lanre and defeats him. You even though Indu is not the female protagonist here, her position in the development of the plot is of significant value. In the film, Iago is called Long long meaning lane, which attributes to another mythological figure, Shang. Shang is a planet that, according to the Hindu mythology, is a slow moving planet that revolves around the sun, and is associated with black collar and walks with a limp. This mythical trigger is associated with bad luck. And that's the drawing influence of lambda in Ankara. Light can be equated to the beginning of Ankara has done for since Shani said to be the God of karma or one's actions, it can be concluded that Ankara is himself involved in his own downfall. As he is unable to see the truth and false through the deceitful plans of flora. Shani is also associated with black color as a tall talked about he walks he can be seen in the film, in the form of long long walks in with a limb in the dark alleys. He is always shot in dim light, and he adds to the mystery which brings about a kind of mystical persona that holds some secrets within his heart, and that alludes to the dark intentions that he has. My argument is that while Iago becomes the green eyed monster in Othello, longer becomes the demonic figure associated with evil and dark horses, and black is the color associated with him. pilotage also seems to have borrowed from Rahman, when adapting Otello to the Indian context, as the basic fact remains that both in the epic so in the plane or in the film, where the main character are misled to distress the loyalty of their respective rights, just as in Roman law drum believes the words of a washer man and things got a Sita was not loyal to him. So does in the film, Ankara believe two words a camera and considers the dolly is having an illicit affair with case behind his back. The words of Brandon Turner who is destined Mona's father pelo. Look, look at have more if thou have eyes to see, she has deceived her father and me she did get an Indian adaptation to the word three archery three, three archery three is a term that is mentioned in MGS. Murthy, which is a religious, religious Hindu text. It refers to the mysterious character of women, which is translated or real translation stands as nobody knows about the character or tendency of a woman.
13:21
It is thus, a critical evaluation of how Shakespeare's plays were translocated and adapted into the Indian setting, along with aiming, rethinking and repositioning Shakespeare in 21st century intends cinematic setting, acting as a cultural bridge, joining the culture of two different countries to get this fighting with the past and thinking that things were different, and they would have been better if they were different. It is better if we see a future that knows no boundaries, and that where where we share and serving and a future where we share the same legacy and making a new history there, all of our cultures collaborate. My larger argument does is if we as New Age, researchers are able to strike a balance between the methods and means by which the old Pinocchio texts are read and analyzed. And that connection is established between the colonizing power not seeing it as a curse, but rather seen is at seeing it as a means of new forms of connection, a call a new area of decolonizing research will develop it will see literature as belonging to all it does not restrict it by borders or by geopolitics, or where the nations or the nationality of the author lies, but rather assimilating and making literature and music accessible to all.
15:03
And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe. And join me next time where I'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between.
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
Tuesday Sep 06, 2022
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The fourth epsiode of the series will feature Professor Raewyn Connell from the University of Syndey and her talk 'Decolonising the work of research'.
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription
00:09
Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development, and everything in between. Hello, and welcome to the fourth in our series on decolonizing research. In this episode we hear from Professor Raewyn Connell from the University of Sydney on decolonizing, the work of research
00:44
greetings from Sydney in Australia, I'm Raven, Carnell, and I'm speaking to you on the subject of decolonizing, the work of research, and the significance of the word work will come through. I'm pleased to send you best wishes for this very interesting and imaginative idea of a festival of decolonization in, in, in relation to research. Which event of a kind, I haven't come across the form. I'm interested, of course, because I am a researcher, I've been working for going on around 50 years, as a researcher still trying to learn about it. And there is always much to learn. But I do have some experience then. And that tells me that research is above all else, as a practical matter, matter of things you actually do forms of labor, and, and communication. And that's basically the approach that I want to take in in discussing decolonization. And I wanted to start with a couple of images of the country that I'm speaking from, which illustrates something about knowledge and coloniality. So at this point, I will attempt the great technological feat of sharing my screen choosing my PowerPoint presentation, go you share. And then attempting even to go full screen. So is that successful? Is that come through? Yes, yeah. Excellent. Excellent. Okay, we're underway then. Let me show you a couple of pictures of Australia, not the tourist version. But one from Australian history Australia is a settler colonial country. Its modern society has taken a form shaped by that 230 years of colonization, emigration, and forcible occupation of the land that had previously been occupied by indigenous people who have been here for according to the archaeologists, something like 70,000 years, this is one of the oldest, continuously existing cultures in the world, if not the oldest. But what I'm showing you here is a picture from the late 19th century. A picture drawn by one of the colonizers and published in a local magazine in Melbourne, showing the kind of settlement that moved British occupation out across the land. This is what we in Australia have, for a long time called a station. Perhaps what the Americans understand is backed by a wrench that's in the Western District of Victoria place called Hopkins Hill. And it shows the house that was built by the family to whom this land was granted under colonial rule by the colonial government. And I like this picture because not only does it show how basically European style of art architecture was brought here with perhaps a touch of Indian experience, Imperial experience in it in the wide veranda. But also something about the people who did it because if you look closely
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at the picture, you'll see four people in the middle of the picture standing in front of the house. They are white, they are men, and they're all carrying guns. And somehow that encapsulates a certain relationship to the land. And this has been processed, of taking land that has been characteristic of the whole Imperial story. The second image I want to show you is a modern one, it's contemporary. It's now can I cause? No, why? There we are, that's what I do. This is a painting by a woman of an Aboriginal community indigenous community from the central desert of the continent. In a style, which some of you will recognize, because this is now the most famous art style in Australia known as Dark painting, central desert painting. It's a woman's image, painted by a woman and embodying knowledge, embedding knowledge, which belongs to the women of that particular community. It's called Honey and dreaming. And it's not only an image of the land, the circular parts of the drawing represent water holes and sources of water in order is a very dry landscape. And places where groups of women may gather at a particular time of year. And the U shaped. Symbols in a painting represent people sitting in a sandy place. There's also a representation of water, the lines connecting the water holes show flows of water across the land. And also embedded in the pictures knowledge of when a particular food source. The honey ants, which are the species of ant that gather honey from flowers, and from the plants of the area, are available to be to be harvested by the community. So what you've got here is not just an image, but also a body of knowledge, what we might think of as multidisciplinary knowledge, about geography, about hydrography, about social relations as to who's entitled to have this knowledge and also about biology. And that is something I'd like you to bear in mind. When I talk about the different patterns of knowledge that we come across in thinking about coloniality and decolonization. I want to move from that immediately to territory that's more familiar to most of us here, and that is the disciplinary knowledge system, more knowledge formation, that is characteristic of universities in all parts of the world that produces the mainstream curriculum that I have taught and some of you have taught and all of you have studied. That's a pattern of knowledge, which has been analyzed in this topologies, sociology, knowledge and so on and so forth. Great deal. It's something that I've written about, in if you'll excuse the advertisement in my most recent book, known as the good university, the first chapter of that book, discusses the research what I call the research based knowledge formation and discusses the nature of the labor that goes into research and the different kinds of labor actually that combine to produce
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research based knowledge. As I say in in that book, there are multiple forms of labor in research, five principal ones that I identify. One is consultation with the archive. That is the body of knowledge already existing in interdisciplinary field. When graduate students write their review of the literature in chapter one of the PhD thesis, that's basically what they're doing. Then there's the labor of encounter, which may be data gathering in the field, it may be experimentation, maybe the study of literary texts in the humanities, or artistic images, all of that, but the encounter of the researcher or researchers with their materials is interesting form of labor. And what they've encountered or as they're encountering, they're also concerned with what it means. And this involves a kind of labor that I call patenting, which involves theorization, it involves data analysis, a statistical data analysis, involves interpretation of texts, and the like. And that also is required in the overall movement of disciplinary knowledge. And then this one I call labor of critique, when you got your materials when you've done your patenting, or you want to know what you've got, it's different from what was there before. So you have to relate it back to the archive, that you knew at the beginning of the process, and revise the archive in the light of the new knowledge that you've generated. That's the labor that I call Critique. And in that sense, critique is the growth point of disciplinary knowledge. And then finally, and important is this all the rest is the broadcasting of the results of the labor. Because what we're talking about is a collective form of knowledge produced by a workforce. And the circulation of the results of research labor, is absolutely essential to the to the process as a whole. Hence, the whole apparatus of journals, online communication conferences, and of course teach to as well as part of the broadcasting. Okay, so you can see that there's a very active labor process got a complex labor process that's involved in the production, if we think of knowledge as as produced, there is a production process and that's it. And this is very much collective labor and collective labor requires a workforce, you know, knowledge doesn't drop from the sky, people have to work and there has to be a group working and organization of that group. And this is quite different knowledge formations differ. So indigenous knowledge of the kind that you saw in Narnia and dreaming painting. The knowledge bears the workforce are traditionally known in Aboriginal communities as the eldest. In Islamic base knowledge such as Islamic jurisprudence and as Islamic theology. The workforce is known as the llama. The Islamic scholars, who are not a priesthood are respected as scholars is knowledge parents. In the knowledge in the cert in the research base knowledge formation, it is researchers, popularly known as scientists, of course, we know to include humanist researchers, social scientists, as well as natural scientists. Now, this workforce has existed for considerable time. And the research base knowledge formation has a history of about 500 years. This is also the lifespan of imperialism of overseas imperialism from Europe. And that is not a coincidence because the two are, in fact very closely related.
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So closely related that I don't think we can think of disciplinary knowledge really, outside On a global economy of knowledge, which it has its roots in the story of imperial expansion, colonial encounters, and what we might call the knowledge dividend of empire. Because it wasn't just the gold or the slaves that float back under the control of the colonizers. There's also knowledge and knowledge in many forms. You know, social scientific knowledge about the societies that are encountered natural science, knowledge, and so on. Here is an example of the knowledge that was brought back from the colonized world. This is an important document in the history of biological science, specifically by geography. It's the practice of oppression, aristocratic, called Alexander fondly. It may be known as name may be known to you, who went as a young man to the colonial areas of North Northern and West Coast, South America, then under Spanish control, and studied the plants, animals, geography, atmosphere, he was one of the pioneers of atmospheric science, as well as biogeography. And this is a kind of map that he had drawn on his return to Europe, which synthesized a huge amount of data about the distribution of particular species of plants. According to height, from sea level up to the Andes Mountains, and across the continent from east to west. And that is a typical kind of process of going to the colonies and bringing back data which is in process to metropole. Actually, Humboldt is not the most famous person who did that. The most famous person, undoubtedly, is Charles Darwin. It's been three years sailing around the colonial and postcolonial world, in the famous royal navy ships, the eagle, and brought back that geological and biological data that was so important in the creation of the theory of evolution, and modern biology. And the data that came back in all these different fields of knowledge, were then accumulated in the institutions of the global north, the Botanic Gardens, the universities, the scientific societies, the journals, what we now think of data bases, data archives, and so on, and theorized and turned into organized knowledge in those kinds of institutions. That's applied to so for those of you who are social scientists, this applies in the social sciences to and here's a fascinating example. So book by some Australian colleagues, about if about a famous 19th century book of anthropology called Camilo, Roy and Kurenai, about kinship systems, which was the big concern of anthropology throughout its history. Now, what our colleagues uncovered when they went back into the archives of this book and the 19th century authors of this work on on Aboriginal kinship is the discovery that they, they if this wasn't, if you like the experimental research or just observation, one, like by going and looking at a tree, you can't do that with a kinship system, you have to ask about it. So in effect, the colonizers, in this case, the authors of the anthropological
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treatise, were engaging with in a sense, employing the elders of a local Aboriginal communities as the knowledge sources, and that's extended the knowledge workforce of the empire of the Imperial knowledge system, to the colonized people, intellectual workers of the colonized people, as well as the colonizers. And in that sense, I would never say that the research based knowledge formation is Western knowledge or Western science? I don't think that's right. It is, if anything, you've got to use a phrase like that it's Imperial science because it embeds an enormous amount of knowledge and know how from the colonized and colonized regions, as well as the knowledge of the colonizers. So the as the the economy of knowledge on the Empire evolved, it developed a very significant division of labor. And this is something I learned, particularly from the work of West African philosopher Pauline tungee. Who's writing if you want to follow these issues up, I very strongly recommend his work to most of them is available in English, also available in French. And he pointed out that fields, the familiar fields of knowledge that we we teach in universities in those fields, the colonized and post colonial world so contemporary Africa, mainly functions as a data mine, which produces raw materials that have been organized some process by theoretical labor, in the global metropole, in the Imperial center. So there's kind of division of labor, built into the structure of the global economy of knowledge, where there's mainly a flow of data from the colonized and post colonial world to the Imperial center, and a flow of theory and methodology the other way, which frame the collection of data. And that is the principal role in the whole global economy of knowledge of academics, searches, knowledge workers in the colonized and postcolonial world. And there's one more thing that has to be said about this economy of knowledge, but it was also based on certain exclusions, it excluded the kind of knowledge that we saw in the honey and creaming painting, that is indigenous knowledge formations of the colonized. The the interdisciplinary, multi, non disciplinary knowledge that you saw in that case, also excluded was alternative universalism, like Chinese organization of men's medical knowledge, like Islamic jurisprudence, and those forms of knowledge that were not so place based this indigenous knowledge usually is also competed, if you like for the interest of the world as a whole, but had roots in a different cultural formation. And then there's the knowledge that I call southern theory, which is basically knowledge produced in the colonial encounter itself, by the colonized, and sometimes by colonizers in Lockhart, in the colonial context. These two have mostly been, if not dramatically, excluded, then strongly marginalized. As you see, when you look at the statistics on the leading journals, in almost every university discipline, the leading journals, the ones that are most heavily cited, the most respected, almost all come from the club or north.
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Okay, that's, that's what we're up against. That's why the decolonization project is truly important. For university teaching, university based research, all university disciplines are affected by this. Which then leads me to the question, how do we do it? How do we contest the inequality inequalities, the geographical exclusions and so forth that has shaped the knowledge that is taught and circulated in in the universe, a global university system? Well, there are many if you like democratic knowledge projects in the world. Let me show you a few. Here's one from Sweden. It's I'm sorry, this book has never been translated into English, which I think is a great pity because it's a lovely book. Its title means dig where you stand. And it's about a workers education self education project, of researching their own jobs researching the history of their own jobs. It was taken up by the unions in Sweden, it became a popular knowledge movement like you know, popular on a photography, bird watching popular astronomy, this became popular social science. Who better to understand the history of their job than the person who has the job now, but that led outwards to the industry and industry, the industry history in the community? It led outwards to the economy as a whole and ultimately it goes to questions about globalization. So fascinating stuff. Let me show you another. This is from Central America. The work of Nassim Martin Barro, a Jesuit psychologist, no longer with us as a result of of repressive violence in in that region, but who tried to create a new pattern new kinds of psychology that was his teaching discipline in this university teacher which would be produced knowledge that was actually useful to the oppressed, indigenous and working classes of the Central America region where he worked. He developed the it came to be called liberation psychology on the model of liberation theology. It never became popular in mainstream academic psychology. But if any of you are psychologists, I can recommend Martine borrow as a fascinating, interesting example of other ways to think about your discipline. Let me show you another. This is another university. This is a picture taken almost exactly 100 years ago, when the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, many of you will know who had been working to create a relevant form of schools in Bengal decided that a good school system needed a college top, if you like a tertiary education top, he looked at the Colonial universities that have been set up by the colonizers in India, quite relatively large university system was created in colonial India. But he wasn't satisfied with it, because it was controlled by the colonial colonial power. So he created his own This is it. This is the launch ceremony of the college that he called this variety, which he understood as which he intended to be what he called a meeting place of civilization.
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We might call a genuinely multicultural curriculum on a global scale. So in their knowledge from indigenous traditions in India was taught knowledge from Europe, Western academics, unquote from Europe to knowledge from China was taught monitoring Tibet. It was intended to be a meeting place for different knowledge formations, to create a unique curriculum, hopefully not unique. Now, it was a struggle. It ran into financial trouble. But it's hard it's still a day in a somewhat different forms now public university in the Indian university system. But they are very proud of this history and it is a fascinating personal story. So we have from below projects, knowledge projects, we have new workforces and institutions as part of the contestation. And we also have contestation that takes the form of shifting the logic of a given methodology a given set of research methods. Those of you who are interested in decolonizing knowledge very possibly I come across this book and I can strongly recommend it indeed to everyone. Linda to you, I Smith is a teacher in Maori communities in our own New Zealand where who that is those communities in the last generation who have developed a number of higher educational institutions based on Maori cultural principles of teaching and learning, and research. And this book is gives a whole stack of examples of forms of research that treat the indigenous people in New Zealand not as the objects of research but as subjects as participants and designers in the research process, where the intention is to study Maori situations, Maori experience Maori contemporary life. Okay, now, those of you who've read this book will know that it's some of its procedures, relatively familiar in qualitative methods in the social sciences, and some people have drawn the, I think, mistaken conclusion that indigenous knowledge is necessarily qualitative. In contrast to quantitative that is. And this, in fact, is not the case. And his the demonstration, a book called indigenous statistics by Maggie Walter, the Australian Indigenous colleague of mine, sociology, Chris Anderson, from North America from from Canada, indigenous scholar there who've taken up the techniques of quantitative research, as for instance, in censuses and surveys, that have historically been used by the colonial power by the colonial state to study and manage indigenous communities indigenous lives. The book mounts an argument for what the author's called data sovereignty, for changing the power relations that are involved in the collection of data and control over the process of crunching the numbers and turning them to the purposes of the indigenous communities rather than the purposes of colonial government. So there's a range of ways in which logics can be shifted in decolonisation connections can be made. Which brings me back to the question of the workforce, how if we want a workforce in the future, in universities that have capacities for this kind of decolonial work? How do we teach? How do we, for instance, teach them new rules for disciplines?
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Well, I would argue that indigenous knowledge in fact, all forms of decolonize knowledge tend to move across genres and across disciplines. So the simple disciplinary agenda is not adequate. Let me illustrate this from one of my great books list in sociology. A book published a bit over 100 years ago, called native life in South Africa. It sounds like the name of so many anthropological monograph, but it's not. It's a highly politicized book, contesting the seizure of indigenous land in South Africa by the new color independent. Color in colonial state that had been set up following what in Britain is known as the Boer War. That is quite controlled state which was the ancestor then of the apartheid regime. The author of this book, this you see in this picture, Solomon Platt chip was the secretary of the organizations later became the African National Congress. And he determined that a knowledge project was needed to gather the information about how this horrendous legislation which was expropriating indigenous land on a huge scale, how that had come about and what its effects were. Well, black people in South Africa at that time couldn't afford a horse. So he went around the country on a bike interview, the displaced families have been moved off as a result of the seizure of land, in this phase of the colonizing project in South Africa and wrote it up in this book, it's an amazing book, it's not only sort of engaged survey research, and interview based social science, it's also historical analysis of the legislation, cultural critique of the political agenda involved. And so it's amazing book. Multidisciplinary, absolutely, you could not confine it within a single discipline. Okay, do we teach our workforce by teaching them new canons, you know, new famous men's mod, I think, as a systematic business, I don't think we need you know, to displace our Darwin's or Max Weber's or Karl Marx is with with alternative, Darwin's Marxism favors. What we need is a much richer archive for that first stage in the research based knowledge process of consulting the archive. Well, I'm a feminist and feminist researcher, I've been also researching the history of feminism to some extent. And, in the course of that, trying to apply a decolonizing agenda, I've been coming across kind of histories that I didn't know the word in the familiar histories that I have read. And here's a couple of people who might figure well, at least one of them Sorry, I thought I had another before that. In if that history, were told, from a decolonizing perspective, we might see this woman being an OG of idol, development economist, environmental thinker, socialist feminist from India, as perhaps the most significant feminist theorist in our generation, done amazing work. And much of what I've been saying raises issues about land. She wrote the book on gender and land, it's called a field of one's own, it should be in your library, if it's not going by the librarians here until they get it an amazing, truly amazing book and an example of the power of the social knowledge that come out of the post colonial context. Okay, and then we come to the question of how we think all things.
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If we recognize the plurality of knowledge formations, do we then wind up with a kind of epistemology, a theory of knowledge, which is like a mosaic a whole lot of different colored tiles, each completing itself, but not speaking to each other? That's queer, some decolonizing arguments head. And I can respect them. Because that involves respect for all the separate all the different knowledge projects and different communities who might be producing knowledge in distinctive ways. But I also think that the decolonization process or the process now of equalizing resources on a global scale, including the results of knowledge, this needs the practices of connection, as well as separateness, connection and mutual learning. And this is an example of an attempt to make that argument for the importance of South South links and South North links as well as the north south flow of theory and methodology that we're so familiar with. Chilean bobek another story? A colleague of mine makes this argument for global feminism's attempting to break the likes of Northern hegemony in global feminist discourse, and develop an understanding of what it would be to give full recognition to the experience and theories and knowledge of feminist communities in the different parts of the post colonial world. It's a fascinating story, fascinating argument. She talks about the processes what she calls braiding at the borders, rather than an imposition of hegemony, which is an image that suggests the kind of respect that might be lead needed for into the community into regional connections in the future. So if I'm right, that we do need a practice of connection, then we can speak of knowledge on a world scale as the future of knowledge without northern hegemony, saying that, as the goal of my argument, doesn't mean that the North doesn't matter. In this process. I think the decolonization concerns the global north, as as intimately an important is concerns urgent in the Global South. And that's the reason I'm very pleased with what you're doing it excellent. There are resistances to decolonization, which I've certainly frequently run into, in the 20 years, or more than I've been making these kinds of arguments around the traps. Some of them are rooted in in racism, some of them are rooted some of the objections that is, and resistances originate in, in class privilege, but somehow more respect worthy. They may reflect, for instance, some of the resistance to decolonization, that I have encountered reflects a fear on the part of academic workers have losing the skills and knowledge they already have, or being unable to pass them on to the next generation in the way that they expect to. And therefore, I think it's important to, to argue for these processes is an expansion of knowledge, not not a contraction. I think we, as a practical matter, we cannot escape, we cannot just jump out of the global economy of knowledge. It's here. It's links the university system around the world now, this is what we've got, where we are confronting every day,
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on campuses. Some decolonial arguments say that the correct response to this is to D link from it. It's a term from decolonial. Economics actually, but it works for decolonial epistemology as well. I would rather say we should be trying to transform rather than simply separate from the existing global economy of knowledge, partly because setting. Knowledge already embeds so much knowledge from the global south that we don't want to abandon. We need certainly to link existing disciplinary knowledge with new perspectives and local practices in different ways. But I don't think we need a radical abandonment of forms of knowledge are already able to be used. So I see that the decolonizing projects they're not as radically displacing existing knowledge formation, but basically is the cutting edge of projects for the for the democratization of knowledge. That project which we've seen before in local forms, like the degrees then project in Sweden. or liberation psychology in Central America. We can now imagine on a world scale, and that is what the decolonization of, of research now I think has to be about.
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And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe and join me next time where I'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in
Monday Sep 05, 2022
Monday Sep 05, 2022
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The third epsiode of the series will feature Dr. Foluke Adebisi from the University of Bristol and her talk 'Decolonisation and Research: Finding and unsettling your ‘why'.'
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription
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Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development, and everything in between.
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Hello, and welcome to the third in our series on decolonizing research. For this episode, we hear from Dr. Fluka Adebisi from the University of Bristol in her keynote, decolonization and research finding and unsettling your why.
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So I've been asked to give this keynote which I have titled very, very roughly, decolonization and research finding an unsettling your why. So the my aim here is to talk about the try and give a rough definition of decolonization, what decolonization is what the colonization is not what does that word than mean for research as a sort of broader concept? And sort of reflect on the ways in which the relationship between sort of decolonization colonization, colonialism coloniality, how that relationship or what it has resulted, to or in in terms of research? And how can we think beyond those sort of that relationship or that that nexus, I'm going to attempt to speak for about 30 to 35 minutes never entirely, works well to maybe 14 at a push, and then leave room for questions. Since I'm completely in charge, you can put questions in the chat. So I'll come back to them. Once I finish, I am going to be talking, you know, my area of expertise is mostly low. So I'm going to be talking to a certain extent at a particular level of abstraction. So I would really be I really look forward to the types of questions you will have pertaining to your own sort of areas of expertise research that you are doing. So before I go into this, I just want to thank Kelly Louise Preece for inviting me and for sort of supporting my ability to come here and speak on decolonization and research. I also want to recognize and acknowledge that the very Nexus that we're talking about the relationship between pooling reality, colonialism, colonial logics, and research has produced certain harmful practices, the certain people who have been the object of unethical research across time and space, and I hope that our conversations today will maybe begin to allow us to do justice to their lives. So I'm, yeah, so I'm going to start by thinking through all sort of talking through this focus here with an anti colonial frame. I do struggle a bit even though I write a lot on decolonization, I do struggle a bit with what exactly we're trying to say. So really thinking through an anti colonial frame, and suggesting that the unfolded logics and practices the ways in which colonization and racialized enslavement have operated, the these very logics were produced from and have produced and an even an unequal world. And as researchers, we must not only we must ask not only that, we researched the truth of that production. So what exactly did
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racialized enslavement and what exactly does continuing or ongoing colonialism entail? But also question how our own logics, our own theories and practices, the things we do as researchers, what part do they continue to play in the production, maintenance and reproduction of this unequal world? And why exactly do we research it's definitely not for the money, considering how much researchers are not paid. So why exactly do we do research? What world do we want to research the knowledge that we produce? What world do we want? It's to produce the world we have or a new, different world. I often describe the world we have a world of scars, smudged fingerprints and broken bones. So is it possible considering the standards of our disciplines the structures in which They exist the world in which it is embedded, is it possible for our research to what we research and how we research to change the world? So when I say thinking through the break, I mean, how do we think through this reproduction? How do we break this and disrupt this cycle. So very briefly want to start with, you know, what is not decolonization. So very often, and I'll come back to this in a few slides, the phrase decolonizing, our research is used, and I tend not to want to use it. And a lot of times when people use these sorts of phrases, phrases, they're talking about sort of making research more inclusive, ensuring that we've got the right citations. So there's a conflation between our use of decolonization as a word, and things like equality, diversity, inclusion representation. And that's not to say that equality, Edi and representation are bad things, but just that they're different things, there's certain registers that decolonization should call to mind, and sometimes they're not the same registers. But having said that, there is an overlap, obviously, between the organization and EDI in the sense that sometimes EDI can be used as a means to achieve decolonization or a measure of success of what we're doing. But essentially, when we're thinking about decolonization, we're thinking about other ways of thinking, being and living in the world. So we should be careful not to conflate one with the other. So having said what decolonization is not I, then I'm sort of forced or have put myself in a sort of tight spot of having to define decolonization. And I find it difficult to define decolonization. But one way to think about it is sort of lots of writers for example, Sylvia winter, and the bulky handle, Nelson Maldonado Torres. And so many of us, they put the inception of colonialism slash coloniality, around the 15th century, so 1492 1444 and what they, you know, that sort of date is the suppose that discovery of the Americas, you know, these voyages of discovery, not just the Americas, but also the voyages to southern cape of Africa, the western coast of Africa. So, it at that particular time, you have this almost meeting this confrontation of two different ways of living. The, this confrontation, therefore, it has been suggested, leads immediately to a repudiation of the world in the world, which which introduces, and that is what we define as decolonization. Or that's what can be defined as decolonization. So to put it differently, we can sort of define decolonization as an immediate continuing and stubborn refusal of the colonial conditions of domination, dispossession, and dehumanization that were introduced in the 14th century. But it's also important to note that these sort of encounters these colonial encounters occurred in different contexts, and were deployed using different means and tact tactics, all of them, you know, political and epistemic, and social and legal, and so many things. Therefore, decolonization or the refusal of these ways of thinking being and doing in the world
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have always, you know, been context dependent. So the concept of decolonization responds directly to the sort of the ways in which colonial logics were introduced in that particular context. And that's why I would define or describe decolonization as a set of strategies to refuse the part from, among other things, political and epistemic strategies of ongoing colonial conditions. The other thing to point out is that, because it's a political project of racialized peoples, indigenous peoples and colonized peoples, it's very difficult to suggest that in the Global North that we can take any control of the logics and practices of decolonization so it runs from the Global South, northwards it has existed. It's an immediate and continuing refusal from the 15th century of the ways of being and thinking doing of colonialism, which means that it's important to understand what These sets of strategies are what this set of such strategies is responding to. So if we're saying decolonization is a set of strategies responding to the introduction or the integration of colonial conditions of life, what exactly are these colonial conditions of life and how are they integrated? So, I use the words colonialism and coloniality interchangeably to distinguish it from colonization. So colonization would be the administrative control of territory, so the actual spatial temporal administration of territory but colonialism or colony ality. According to Annabelle Kihara who uses the word collegiality remains the most general form of domination in the world today. So he talks about the colonial matrix of power, which sort of at its base, the social category of races introduced as a key mode of classification or a technology of power to create a hierarchy of humanity. That hierarchy, therefore, also relates to epistemologies to normativity is to ontologies. And I'll come back to this in in a moment. So you have on the slide there, a panel so this is taken from South America, where the hierarchy that was created was sort of a range of 16 different races and hierarchies of humanity. Nelson Maldonado, Torres talks about you know, this ongoing colonization sort of colonialism coloniality and distinguish it distinguishes it from colonialism, from colonization, sorry. So he says that colonialism refers to the long standing patterns of power that emerge, and they sort of they are produced by or maintain the live in books criteria for academic performance. And essentially, this concept of coloniality is constitutive of what we understand as modernity. So, Maldonado Torres argues that as modern subjects as subjects of modernity, we breathe coloniality all the time, and every day. So work, when we talk about decolonization, we have to understand that the relationship between coloniality and modernity is integral to the work that we produce the world we research the language in which we use the methods, they're all produced by colonially coded logics that can be in certain cases made invisible, because, you know, that's just the world we live in, right. So the problem therefore, with this, you know, breathe in coloniality, every day, and all the time, it's more than subjects is that because of the hierarchy created the epistemic hierarchy of humanity that has been created, that particular bodies, racialized bodies, gendered bodies, sexualized bodies, bodies, that sort of non heteronormative
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sort of economically disadvantaged bodies, all these sorts of groups of bodies are not structured within our knowledge system have not been structured within these knowledge systems, as Knowers. So one could ask them, whether or not the vocabularies these sort of markers of modality, as Nelson Maldonado Torres is, you know, talking about things been maintained alive the vocabularies, categories of thought, concepts that are employed by our normative social science that, you know, in my own case, are they an effective means for making sense of or understanding research in these non Western worlds? As Ronco, you mean, suggests, we've got Western theories and African subjects and these things do not always sort of resonate or CO locate. So we then are attempting within most of our research to explain the ways of being and thinking that don't arrive or not predicated on concepts such as gender, the colonized notions of nations or categories as developed, developing traditional or modern, so we are trying to understand something or we're trying to understand things through lenses that are sort of structured not to see the things that they are trying, or they're claiming to see, we have these ideas of rights and obligations in which do not sort of, again, map on to the way in which are the ways in which indigenous colonized racialized peoples have sort of Article ated, the interrelationships. And this has led to, among other things, the breakdown of human interaction, as well as the breakdown of the sort of environment and the climate. And we've got sort of climate change, rising waters. So essentially what we're doing in many cases is we're taking people's experiences and trying to transpose them through preconceived categories, assimilating them into terms that are then put into work, but they're not seeing the things that we are trying to make them see. And this leads me back to my initial sort of framing question, what is our why? Why are we doing this research, if we're not actually seeing as well as we could be the experiences we are trying to research the world that we are trying to research. So, the coloniality, colonialism, sort of modernity relationship is almost reliant, then one could sort of present on the commodification of knowledge. So rather than actually producing knowledge for the making the world better, we are actually producing knowledge that is more or less commodified, or common and modifiable, that you have what I call the research industrial complex. This produce production of publications that relies very much on free labor on equal international research, partnerships and a long history of harmful research. As Linda two way Smith argues, she says research is one of the it's probably one of the dirtiest slang words in the indigenous world's vocabulary. In one of her lectures, Eve tuck tells a story of how white Canadian researchers would regularly visit indigenous communities to collect vials of blood from indigenous peoples without their consent, and without care, and they would pay them $1 Each time a particular child called that $1 That blood money Sibella and love that shiny, describes research and ask the activity of undressing other people so as to see them naked. Emanuela gray asked us to always understand that research, knowledge production cannot be neutral. And often by trying by claiming objectivity and neutrality, we obscure the political and ethical dimensions of research. So I suggest that to think about research, we need to sort of unpack so if we're thinking about research and decolonization, we need to unpack the what the how the WHO for what we value, and what exactly it is it for. So the ontology, epistemology, normativity, axiology. And teleology. And I'll come back to those know how those map onto other bits of our research in a few sort of seconds.
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So I want to sort of very quickly think through or think about, or talk about how research has sort of been exceptionally harmful. So there are lots and lots of examples. I'm only going to mention a few. Marion Sims, for example. The it's called the father of gynecology, and he lots of his research was based on experimentation on enslaved women without anesthesia and without their direct consent. Robert Koch, who is called the father of immunology set up concentration camps, essentially, in East Africa, where he tested on the indigenous population, chemical called a toxin which contained arsenic trying to find out how effective it was a secure for sleeping sickness, it was known that this chemical would cause blindness, severe sort of reactions and even death. When he perfected it, he brought it back. So he, he was German brought it back to Germany, and sort of commodified it marketed it the Tuskegee syphilis, experimental study involves the sort of treatments so to speak of, or the injection of black subjects or black men with so they were being studied about 400 black men were being studied, they will deliberately left untreated so that doctors could be could study syphilis. They were told the subjects of the study, all black men were told that the they were being given a cure, most of them died horrifically. Then we've got Henrietta Lacks whose stem cells were taken without her consent, again commodified without her Families consent, the Kamloops residential school in Canada, the indigenous registers dental school were very young children between the ages of four, excuse me, and 15 were taken from their families. In the past year, it was discovered that there were on there were mass graves on that particular property, and several other mass graves and residential schools have been discovered. And this was based also on sort of research around educational research around the best way to provide education for indigenous peoples. In the current day, we have studies on FGM, we have studies on child soldiers we have there was a study in Nairobi paper was released in 2020, where the subjects of the study were left without wastewater and water for about 10 months. We have therefore, excuse me, there's a long history of over research communities in the context in which the presumptions sort of around the time are that the these over research communities or not, so they fall into this hierarchy? So the into the bottom of the hierarchy of humanity? So the underlying questions that I sort of raised earlier, the ontology, the epistemology normativity, teleology, axiology of these studies, affect and continue to affect the design care, research questions that are being put forward, the very asides put it why of the research? So if we, as modern subjects breathe coloniality all the time and every day? How, then is our research, continually being shaped by the breadth of modernity that is constitutive of coloniality? How do these sorts of questions around who we are as human beings, and where we live, as you know, the Earth or the planet upon which we live? How does that affect the very research that we do the very sort of languages, vocabularies, concepts upon which we rely on? How do we try and break out of those.
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So there is a paradox here. And this is why I kind of tried to trace the my examples of this sort of harmful research from period of racialized enslavement to 2020, that we think that as you know, time continues to move on, there is progress being made, we are becoming more aware of the ways in which race permeates the structures of our research projects, and there is increased urgency to addressing that. So you know, you've been saying when we have to do better, we need to decolonize this and recognize that or we need to be aware of, you know, questions of diversity or inclusivity. But what is actually happening, on the other hand, so on the one hand, we are being sort of becoming more aware, trying to be more inclusive, on the other hand, there is an increased pressure to deliver and lots of people in higher education will sort of relate to or will be able to sort of testify to the fact that the publish or perish, is increasingly becoming publish and perish. And therefore, this pressure to deliver indirectly relies on racial inequalities, it relies on all sorts of inequalities. And you see this paradox apparent in things like budget spreadsheets, where addressing salary inequalities of partners in the Global South, for example, means shrinking the number of outputs that can be achieved within a fixed project budget. So metrics and commodification essentially will continue to produce bad ethics and these bad ethics rely on these sort of vocabularies, these concepts of humanity that have always been harmful, and continue to to be harmful. So how do we move beyond research ethics as a form of litigation protection? And think through this, you know, paradox, this research paradox, we are more aware of this racial inequality, but we are still more we continue to be reliant on these sorts of inequalities to produce outputs. That brings us back you know, brings me back to the question that I started with when we use the word decolonization if we're thinking of decolonization Is this the sets the set of strategies that seeks to repudiate the introductions of these colonial conditions of life? There's colonial ways of sort of ways of dehumanization, dispossession, these ways of thinking, being and living in the world. How exactly do we then talk about decolonizing? Our research? And I suggest that maybe we cannot do that. But I'll sort of give a few sort of suggestions in the next few slides and then Close. And one of the reasons why I suggest that we cannot think that far at the moment is because we are often bound by the standards of the discipline, we are bound by the structures of the university and the world in which we live, work, study, the world in which we breathe. But how then. So, you know, if my suggestion is that that is all to think about decolonizing our research means we need to think beyond the very sort of form of the research itself. What can we do? In the meantime, what do we do? And this is why I always suggest, let's start with the why, why are we doing this, if we're researching, as I said, if we're researching because of the amount of money we think we're going to make from research, then that's probably we've probably chosen the wrong profession. But lots of times, we do want to make the world better. And that if we, if we then see that it is difficult to do so from within the way in which
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the ways in which we are researching the requirements that they have given us that we can sort of work with, think about those rules and unpack them a little bit. So going back to, you know, questions of, you know, ontology, the what question, how do we know, question, Who is it for question, what do we value, we need to think about all of those things. And the products of you know, how coloniality slash colonialism has produced this world, at every single bit of our research project. So at the very beginning, how are we forming our questions, questions of knowledge production? Who are we choosing as partners? What's the relationship? What's the power balance between the partners? who's designing the research? Who's delivering the research? Who's doing the analysis? What form of outputs? Are we thinking about? Do they reproduce these inequalities of this colonial world? Or do they unpack that? Do they disrupt that? So essentially, what does disrupt all of this is the question that we should be was one of the questions that we should be asking at every stage, not at the end, or in the middle. Because there's a tendency, I often see where people talk about decolonization once they've set up their research project. They know the question, they know, the partners, and they think, well, around the time and thinking about outputs, I'm going to think about decolonization. What we need to think on a more macro scale, we need to sort of think about all the theories that we are resting on the theoretical frameworks, for example, are they seeing the people the lived experiences that we want to research? How do we then bring in or enable theorizing from the outside? Are we thinking of our research as you know, there's a universal standard I'm going to try and force other lived experiences and knowledge is into this universal standard or subjugate them to the standard. Escobar asked us to think accurate, Escobar says think about or embrace the pure diversity, universality of epistemologies and ontologies. Therefore, we need to rethink who we're relying on on as thinkers, especially when those thinkers are sort of directly involved in creating these hierarchies of humanities. What vocabularies are we using what's key nations? What questions what concepts are we using, essentially, as Delmia suggests, we need to think about theorizing about as a sort of system of fostering caring, caring for each other. So that's humanity and the earth and that to me is what is your why if the why of research, why we're doing this research, why are we doing this question? If it sort of sits outside of caring for each other and the earth, then we are always going to come back to these questions of, you know, decolonization and colonial knowledge is and colonial. logics in this sort of harmful outcomes of research. So we need to think about who sets the research agenda? Who picks the question? What's the framework? What's the methodology? Who are the partners in thinking through these sort of, you know, what is decolonization in relation to all that? So, as I start, you know, as I said, at the start, I'm thinking with an anti colonial frame, rather than sort of one of decolonization. And that's not to say, you know, decriminalization is relevant is just, I think, because the word excuse me, the word has been co opted a lot I then struggle and has been conflated with, you know, an EDI approach. I then struggled to sort of use that word to articulate what exactly it brings to research. But I think, essentially, for me, it's about an anti colonial reflective practice. All the questions that I have outlined is about thinking, how our research what we do in its sort of theoretical framework in its methodology, in the very research questions, who we partner with the outputs we produce, who we fund, who we're funded by, sorry, you know, the conversations that we have, how all of this can produce different visions of being, doing thinking, that do not reproduce the harms of the past. So the way ways in which we can disrupt this world of broken bones, broken bodies and broken souls.
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As Deborah Byrd rose tells us, epics of decolonization reverse or sidestep, temporal and spatial forms of punctuation, replacement and exclusion. They embrace the coexistence of the peoples who share this place, and embrace the present moment as the time in which all of us share our lives. These ethics expand the present, enabling it to become a real domain of moral action. And sort of to rephrase her to think about decolonization in our research, is to think about doing research in a way in which we do not undress. People who we are researching, to think about research, so it doesn't, it no longer continues to be the dirtiest word in the indigenous vocabulary. So think about decolonization way that doesn't put to think about research sorry, in a way that doesn't produce broken bones, broken bodies, and broken souls to think about research in ways that those communities that have been misused by research, have the space to become the center of their own lives once more.
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And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe. And join me next time where I'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between.
Friday Sep 02, 2022
Friday Sep 02, 2022
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The second epsiode of the series will feature Dr. Richard Hall from De Montfort University and his talk 'Decolonising DMU and the PGR Experience.'
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription:
00:09
Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest, about researchers development, and everything in between.
00:32
Hello, and welcome to the second in our series on decolonizing research. In this episode, we hear from Dr. Richard Hall from De Montfort University, talking about decolonizing DMU. And the PGR experience that's going
00:45
to show on the road then. Thank you ever so much for the invite, Chris, and to Kelly as well. It was it's always lovely to get invited down to come talk about work that you've been doing in particular in relation to decolonizing. A little bit of background about me, I work at De Montfort in Leicester. I'm a professor of education and technology there and a National Teaching Fellow, I've been working with a team looking in the first instance at the awarding gap for undergraduate students that was on a project called freedom to achieve and I was the kind of project evaluation and research director on that. And we have a couple of publications out on the back of that I'll talk about that in a little bit more in detail in a in a second. And now I have the same kind of role on our decolonizing DMU project, which has been running since 2019. So I just want to I'm not, I guess I'm, I'm not reclaiming. I don't know what I'm claiming in terms of expertise. I'm not sure I'm claiming any. What I want to do really is to talk you through some of the things that we have been doing as we've tried to widen our work in relation to postgraduate research and some of the issues that have cropped up in that space that we are trying to work through that may then trigger some conversation. So I've got I've also should say I'll pop into the chat afterwards, I've got I've got the slides and some other papers, a self audit tool that we generated, and a presentation on research ethics and PGR on my website, so I'll ping those in the chat, so you'll have access to those as well. I also want to add that much of this work has come out of a long, long period of work with doctors Lucy Ansley, and Paris Connolly, who both currently work at DMU. Lucy is the research fellow on the decolonizing, the new project in Paris was her was her maternity cover. And it was a great privilege to kind of work with them and this work would not have been possible without them. So this is what I want to talk about for the next kind of 25 minutes in a rattle through. I want to try to situate work on the intersection of decolonizing and PGR. Inside an institutional, anti racist program of work called decolonizing DMU. Where that previous previously, that program of work is not really prioritized research is prioritized on the undergraduate experience, it's it's prioritize the awarding gap in particular. So I want to talk about that really, and in particular inside an institution that is teaching intensive and research active.
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Again, the slides are available, I just wanted to kind of give a little bit of an overview, just to say that in terms of our BGR, these latest figures that we have, but in in relation to rpgr population by ethnic group, it is really it is relatively mixed, there are lower levels of of white and certainly white British students than the than the sector average. That's one kind of layer against which we're kind of trying to think about this work going a little bit deeper to kind of think about moving beyond uncovering that layer to try to revealing what exists within that layer, we can see that there's a very definite layer of that level of kind of complexity within that in terms of what we mean by not white, I guess I mean, white in itself is quite, it's complex. And I'm not going here into thinking about other intersections in relation to gender in relation to disability in relation to kind of, I guess, more intersectional kind of understandings. So there is a kind of a layer, a set of layers within that, against which our work has to be placed. So what if we're trying to engage with the lived experiences of students within this space? And in order that those that range of students can see them also reflected in the institution. And as creating the research environment within the institution there are that it isn't as simple for us as kind of white and then Boehm and we're trying to we're trying to, I guess, kind of think through that when we're working with supervisory teams or on doctoral training, for instance. And another layer within this Boris, which is, which is increasingly important, we're seeing within some within some doctoral research, and I'll talk about that in terms of linguist a little bit later, is in relation to what our DDR population looks like in relation to home and international students and what the implications there may be of working with international students through a kind of vehicle decolonizing lens, it's important to note here, I guess that our, in these in these figures, our PGR, population clusters, black is of African heritage.
05:57
Now, the, that's kind of a way of kind of, I guess, trying to talk about the complexities within which we're talking about the population, that populations that we're engaging with, and that will be mirrored with our kind of stuff groupings as well, all of our stuff, groupings tend to look a lot more like me, and tend to be a lot more white, a lot more male, certainly, in particular areas of the university. I'm just gonna give a little bit of background in terms of the context of where this where the work I'm going to talk about has come from, and situate that kind of unraveling of the, of the, of the PGR cohort, our our background, our work over the course since really since 2017, when we were part of a Higher Education Funding Council for England project that then became an office students funded project called freedom to achieve our focus in that was on undergraduate achievement and awarding nothing to do with the kind of student experience beyond that we weren't really thinking about institutional policies and procedures, and we certainly weren't thinking about research. Bringing to achieve was a partnership where it was led by Kingston University. And they, they had they had they had a an inclusive curriculum framework, which is on this diagram is the module on the kind of top right or sort of what whatever that is two o'clock on the right. At the top, they'd also at 12 o'clock, they'd also defined some value added metrics by which kind of program teams could look at the awarding gap within their within their programs. We were looking at this effectively trying to try to link it at the time with work we were doing on on disability and support for universal design for learning as well around kind of around around disability and changes to the DSA in particular that the 2015 I think it was Tory government had bought in. So we were thinking about this really from an undergraduate awarding perspective. And in our co creation events with students. There are some headline thing, headline categories that came out that I think are important that we carried through into our work with PGR students from 2019. So this was uncovered we had we ran some co creation events with students in 2017, through 19. And some of the issues that they they feel like the both students fly with us and with program teams, around relationships, the relationships inside the institution, but also inside the classroom, however constructed, could be lecture could be supervisory team, I guess, if we're thinking about PGR, thinking about their own development in the space as well, and whether that was culturally relevant in relation to the kind of academic support that they were getting. I think that that's important for us to consider stuff around employability as well. And whether that whether the kind of that outplacement stuff beyond the institution, certainly very relevant, I think, for some of my PhD students, whether that whether that was specialized enough for them to kind of think about their own kind of their own kind of, I guess, books or on identity related work in that space. The cultural kind of engagement in terms of teaching and learning, which we kind of we all know about, and a lot of this has come from as well is in there, but also issues around the kind of campus community, wherever there's a sense of belonging and belonging was talked about a lot. One of the other things that was talked about a lot was a perception of inherent whiteness, within that within the space. And these are these are some of the issues that we wanted to kind of carry through and think about in the context of rpgr work. So that was 2017 through 2019. With this fkn office the students funded project freedom to achieve the the outcome of that work really was that we needed to go wider than awarding we needed to go wider than engage engagement with the with the undergraduate issues around retention progression continuation, awarding that this was broader than the continuum. So we defined this project called And decolonizing DMU, which was predicated upon five areas work on where we staff work with students broadly constructed, Library and Learning Services, research, and then the institution and the institutional stuff was really about the race equality charter application that we were working towards. But it was also thinking about policies and structures and issues in relation to things like recruitment and retention.
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At that point at the start, and this disconnects, I think, to our kind of research philosophy, we've also produced draft working position, it's a working position, it is permanently in kind of draft format, it is permanently kind of up for grabs. It was a moment in which we were trying to synthesize what the what the project as a whole was about. And it is important to note that it's called decolonizing DMU. It is, it deliberately centers a process, it deliberately centers the idea that this is a movement, that this isn't a fixed thing that I cannot define Jerusalem on the Hill for you. But we might all in that process of kind of moving. We're thinking about the work of for instance, Zapatista movement that, that asking we move, but we will be questioned where we are in order to take the next step in order to question where we are in order to take the next step. So we were trying to think about this, at the intersection of kind of plural approaches thinking about this in terms of difference and the dignity of difference thinking about this in terms of diversifying in all sorts of spaces and ways decentering. And that's super important. I'll come on to talk about when we think about what Pete postgraduate research students told us about theory and method within their work. So thinking about decentering, knowledge production, thinking about relationality within that, and and devaluing hierarchies. And I'm, I'm super, again, kind of aware of the fact that this is a white male professor talking to you about this kind of stuff. And also diminishing some voices and opinions of dominating. And there's a link to the working position. And it's taken really from a kind of an analysis of work on critical race on abolitionist studies on critical university studies as well. It's about kind of intersection. So as we've moved forward with decolonizing, DMU, we've tried to anchor research in the space, much more than that it was so we've renewed it at the start of the back end of last year and the start of this year. Moving away from those five kinds of components moving towards four commitments, this echoes the work of London Metropolitan University as they've generated their work on an anti racism strategy, which also had commitments embedded within it. And that was a kind of response to some of the work of the ECHR on tackling racism in universities from 2019. The quality of education and research is embedded within that also issues around progression and representation in relation to the kind of stuff within that space as well and what we what might happen there around equality impact, for instance, around promotions. However, however, we have a new vice chancellor, my new vice chancellor, she's Katie Normington has been with us since January 2021. Prior to that, we had an interregnum, with an interim vice chancellor for two years. So at the moment of genesis of decolonizing, DMU, we had moved from a previous Vice Chancellor, who, who left us into A into A into a period with an interim just that 18 months, and then a new vice chancellor. So all of a sudden the kind of strategic governance of this there was a space inside which we could reframe stuff. Now we're seeing with a kind of a new take on it, that there's much more of a push on, on how we map this work to our x axis and participation plan, the race equality charter and thinking again about the awarding gap. So, that kind of sense of Liberator emancipatory work that I talked about in the in the in the working paper gets filed down because of strategic kind of imperatives. So just want to move on to talk about the research environment within this within this context of this project. We had a we had a range of priority stuff we wanted to do evaluate the impact of the project's activity. We wanted to generate a deeper understanding of the journey to become anti racist. We wanted to analyze and this is more important these the next two are the kinds of things I'm going to talk about in the next few slides analyzing the institutional research environment. In particular insight because our research students sit within our research institutes and research centers and they relate to our doctoral training programs when they are supported by a Doctoral College So that research environment and issues around the research community, thinking about
15:07
anti racist research principles, whether we're also moving to the heart of the work we were doing within this strand, we will also try and explore perceptions of what decolonizing means for the university as a whole, I'll come on to talk about some of the outcomes from that because they, they there's a real tension between those, I think, when we when we have worked with and talk to staff on the one hand, and what some of the PhD students PGR students that we've talked to, through workshops have told us in relation to kind of the conservativism of the former, and kind of the desire for more radical action on the on the on the for the latter. There's a lot of stuff on here, this, this is just a guess some of the stuff around the environment that we've done, looking at data with research services, in terms of kind of who is involved in projects, who has been bidding who is PI on project, who's involved in impact case, that is how a PGR is and how is the work of PGR is involved in that. We've done some work with our faculty recent head of research students in business law on admissions and transitions. I'll talk about that in a second. With a dedicated doctoral working group. We've discussed research training, centrally, we've engaged with the faculty research ethics committee, in health and life sciences, which I happen to chair now, in terms of decolonizing, and ethics. And there's a link here to a presentation that I gave to a step of decolonizing, STEM curriculum Working Group on decolonizing and ethics as well that you can access. And also crucially, we had a, we had discussions with 10 of our research institutes, and centers. And I have to confess here that we had 32, I went, I went, I went to 10. Friends, if I'm honest with you, because there are some I knew would would definitely want to give us a harder ride, who definitely have do not have a view that issues around decolonizing a structure or within institutions, and certainly do not apply to Pete The PGR experience. So for us, then there was a, I guess, a focus a little bit of a focus on thinking about through that work, the home home versus international or home and international. And the way in which home and international are entangled was an issue, including some work on language and language in the supervisory space and language within institutions in relation to PGR work. So there's a link here to some of the work of one of my one of the PhD students whom I'm privileged to work with Sumaya Luna, who is who is doing work on the experience of international students, and looking at this in terms of race to linguistics, thinking as well about this in relation to decolonizing and research Engaged Teaching. So trying to think about that trying to think about the relationship between PGR work. And in the context of more broadly research and more broadly, how research influences scholarly practice and teaching as well. Our research tends to map to represent communities made marginal, but tends to be short term and conservative. So one of the things that we've seen almost is a is a fear or a questioning and by some people that actually what the work that they're doing is extractivism it's extracting from particular communities in terms of kinds of data, for instance, and what are the issues there in relation to to participation in co creation, and that that also came out from work we were we were exploring with PGR students. And then this point about if we're trying to enhance the institution, institutions strategically tend to be obsessed with data. However, those data in for decision making those data tend to be owned and managed by different groupings within the institution and trying to get access to them and to link them in order to understand how they what they reveal about the lived experiences that we are being talked about is problematic. So in terms of in terms of that kind of perceptions of decolonizing and this is this is effectively from whilst the 299 surveys here were staff and students, the interviews and the diary entries were where staff
19:36
and really I want to I want just wanted wanted to flag that the that the staff related stuff, effectively focused upon in terms of what decolonizing means and what could be done was much more focused on EDI. It was much more focused upon kind of classic equality, diversity inclusion strategies with limited engagement with reimagining the university with reimagining what spaces might look like with reimagining what, what relationships inside the institution might look like. But it was much more predicated upon kind of equality of opportunity, really, and not seeing kind of structural issues as being a problem within the space. But some stuff, there was much there was much more of a sense of an argument that actually you can't decolonize a NEO colonial space. And that is what the university in the Global North is. For some black and ethnically minoritized students and staff, there was a sense that actually there's a there are problems of trust in in trusting the institution to deliver and that any engagement will just purely be tokenistic. There's all it was also problematic, certainly for the three of the staff that we interviewed. And it came through in a number of the survey, open text responses that some white students and staff a whole whole range of stuff here and denial around refusal about and in particular, and what about Murray, and that what about re being about white working class boys in particular. So here, we were trying to situate our work on decolonizing, I think around trying to how do we build a longer term strategy, whilst at the same time focusing upon this idea that that we can take an anti racist approach, which is daily impersonal, and local and challenging, whilst at the same time doing more decolonizing work that might be about unlearning, and might be about culture change. So in terms of PGR, it is a little bit more detail about what we about what we have been doing over the course of the last kind of 18 to 24 months influenced and impacted by COVID, I would have to say, because really slow down progress within the institution. The first thing that we don't want to talk about that we did was around this issue of of having a working group in our Faculty of Business and Law that was catalyzed in conversation with our faculty head of research students who were subsequently left. And so some of the momentum was dark drifted away because of that. The work that they were interested in discussing, and we had we held a series of workshops on this was around barriers to inclusivity, and ensuring that we can support diversity in relation to candidates and how we I guess, or transition and the criteria that we use when reviewing and assessing applications in relation to the types of methods the backgrounds the the the connections and identities that people are coming in with. And then their methodological approaches that they want to come in with, rather than necessarily forcing them down and kind of a standard sort of set of roots. And there was a sense that that that was happening. And there was a need to effectively to undertake some more reflexive development or training with potential supervisors focus really on kind of unpacking kind of the language you we use in relation to assessment. So how are we assessing excellence? How are we assessing originality? Are we thinking about implicit or unconscious bias when we are when we're working with prospective students, and also with those who are transitioning into the institution and what this group wanted to do was draft a core set of principles around recruitment with their supervisors that will be the would have to think about this issue of balancing disciplinary or subject based quality, whatever that is, and issues of equality or equity. And so in the workshops that we held, people were focused on applications are principles and criteria being applied equally. Are they transparent? For instance, is some sort of hidden? Is there a hidden curriculum in relation to this? Do we is there an expectation of conformity and hegemonic narratives within within the kind of theoretical and methodological domains? And how are we communicating what we what we're looking for? Understanding that we're dealing with developmental and naive and novice and
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researchers in this space, also, being mindful within this and this was brought up by a number of supervisors about the emotional labor that will be required both both of PGR students and supervisors given how given how intense this work could be, and for some, there'll be an A would have to invoke cultural code switching in order to cope within the institution. One of the other issues that was raised was was how have we manage all of this within within a competitive environment where where we just have the ref result sale and people are competing for, for internal bursaries. They're competing for the resources, institutions are on Can disciplines and individuals kind of locked into a competitive environment? And how does money work within that space in particular in relation to kind of international and home students the role of visas within that space as well was talked about? And how do we how do we appropriately mentor and involve a read the full range of PhDs within that space within that kind of more competitive environment. Supervisors, there's another couple of slides on their supervisors talked about transitions and support giving power to PGR. Students themselves as groups were those groups existed within institutes and centers, in order to help overcome issues of isolation in order to support mentoring in order to try to support transition, and here, a very critical issue was raised in terms of how to support the internal transition into PGR, into PhD PGR work, rather than that focus upon external or externally funded students, for instance, part of part of this as well was focused upon in terms of transitions, the pressure the process related pressures of the first year, and how do we work with a range of students to around our relationships, our communication of that our expectations of that, so in particular, here in relation to kind of probation reviews, and who is undertaking those, and an ethics where they might form a block methodologically, or again, theoretically, and here, one of the issues that was was raised was around wellbeing, in particular, and mental health, and particularly in relation to kind of supervisory relationship relationships. And that's, that's this is my final slide on what on those kind of supervisory workshop outcomes. And that was around those kinds of considerations for supervisors. And in and in particular, here, I guess, a sense of how do we broaden the skill sets within teams in order that in order that student identity identities can be supported within that within within the space, and so that's a kind of constant negotiation with students, in terms of the in terms of the PGRs themselves, what they were, what they were focused upon, was much more about horizontal relations within research institutes within their supervisory spaces, respectful of people's kind of privilege, as a as a as a risk as an established researcher with a PhD. The focus upon having dedicated bits of work reading groups, for instance, modes of analysis, different modes of analysis and presentation in order to understand different perspectives, positions and values in particular. So to see this much more driven by humane values within the research environment, and the research sets of relationships, rather than that kind of competitive value, economic value and surplus driven approach that they were situated within, and then how to build a kind of positive, more positive, more inclusive, learning environment. And again, a sense of coming back to kind of methodology and theory and the students were quite strong on not wanting, not wanting to be involved in research that was extractive pushing back against hegemonic theory and hegemonic methods and seeing much more kind of intersection and interaction between theory and method, thinking about engaging with grassroots and participatory work, and thinking much more about intersectional approaches and working with communities.
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So I don't really want to talk much more about, about that about kind of that side of things other than to say that one of the things that kind of came out of this work with 10 reselect centers and Institute's but also with our students and staff was the self audit tool, and it's linked here. It's also linked on my website, and I'll put the I'll put the blog post up in the chat in a second. There's also a talk a dedicated talk about the self audit tool as part of our our first hour decolonizing festival we had a month or so ago, and there's a link to it there. But one of the things that we ask it research institutes and centers to look at well, here's a series of issues in relation to PGR. There are there's a series of other issues we asked them to think about in terms of impact output environment. But in terms of in terms of PGR, we're thinking about we're asking them, do they are they monitoring registrations, completions, terminations, withdrawals in order to come up with action plans? How are they engaging with voice within the context of their center or Institute How are they thinking about scholarships and bursaries? Are they? Are they thinking about dedicated support for black and ethnically minoritized applications into the space? Or are they just open? Not not by you. I said, just you know, and that sounds pejorative, but as their dedicated work varies, that is happening in order to decode the space. For a range of students, this is a critical one, our students are being supported in finding mentors outside of their supervisory teams, I've just we've just been working on with one student that I supervise on on finding someone who can help them in much more detail around critical race. So we've brought that person in. And then what are we thinking about in terms of what do you think about in terms of methodology and theory, the the construction and composition of supervisory teams, and also an examination teams. So this is a range of stuff that we are thinking about in relation to that. So that's the kind of last slide on this, I just, I just then, just want to caution, I guess, before I finish, that a lot of this is now is now increasingly governed, as we know, by a drive a policy driver governance and regulation and funding drive around value and value for money. So we we see this being driven by the Office for Students have a value for money strategy, which against which institutions are regulated. And there's been a an increasing, I guess, momentum around ideas of value as opposed to humane values. And one of the things that our project has been trying to do is to think about relationality humane values. However, we define those, and, as I said before, a kind of movements of dignity really, but they do tend to run up against these regulatory requirements around value and surplus within the space. We equally know that the government is, is has a focus on freedom of speech, and it constructs that in a particular way as well. And at the bottom here, we have a recent tweet from Susan Lapworth, the
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acting head of Office of students talking, talking about how she would expect autonomous, autonomous universities to be thinking carefully and independently about free speech. When signing up to the talks about these sorts of schemes. She's talking about Athena SWAN race equality charter, she's talking about work around decolonizing, for instance. So there's a there's a, there's a cultural and policy terrain that's been constructed in this space. And we we know that there's a need for this work to happen. There's a lot of evidence that has that has been kind of raised from the kind of leading roots work in relation to the PGR, the EHR, CS work on tackling racial harassment, for instance. But intersectional and differential experiences of mental health, for instance. So we know that there's an issue there, but it is being challenged explicitly by government in this space. And it does mean that for institutional leaders trying to do work, for instance, around decolonizing and PGR. There's a line to be there's a line to be trodden, I guess. So. There's just a few quotes from from Gavin Williamson, as part of the government's higher education restructuring regime for around COVID-19. So if you wanted if you want, if you want money, so if you're struggling and you want money is in relation to kind of your response to the pandemic is now closed, then then there are efficiencies there are requirements wrapped around that. And one of them there is a commitment to academic freedom and free speech and student use. Student Unions should not be subsidizing niche activism and campaigns DFD in a statement in 2020, on reducing bureaucratic burden in research and innovation, again, marked out Athena SWAN and race equality work as inefficient, bureaucratic and detracting from core teaching activities. In the free the free speech and academic freedom. Bill, it's very clear that it regards to colonizing as a contested political ideology. So there's there's that space as well. And then I mean, adenan, speaking in response to the Krej commission, it's very clear that an institutional response and a societal response to a lot of these issues should be around the individual and the individuals agency and resilience and support and that support should come from institutions that there is no structure or set of issues that are driving any of these problems in relation to, for instance, PGR transition or BGR achievement and awarding, and instead the issue here is around quality and standards, choice based consumer rights, access participation, and then employment outcomes that is going to be outcomes that drive this. So I just think it's important that that policy framework shapes the institutional appetite for this work, and it shapes some of the responses that we're seeing from staff in relation to conservative responses as opposed to the PGR students desire and drive for something more radical.
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And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe. And join me next time where I'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between
Thursday Sep 01, 2022
Thursday Sep 01, 2022
This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022.
The first epsiode of the series will feature Professor Chrissie Boughey from Rhodes University and her talk 'Decolonising the curriculum: Experiences from South Africa'.
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcription
00:09
Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development, and everything in between.
00:32
Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of R D and the in betweens. This episode marks the first in a new series on decolonizing research. So this is off the back of a decolonizing Research Festival. I organized at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022. We recorded all of the talks as part of the festival and the turning all of those talks into podcast episodes so that whether you are able to attend the festival or not, you can still benefit from the rich and vibrant knowledge that was shared. So without further ado, here's our first recording. The first talk from the festival was called decolonizing, the curriculum experiences from South Africa. And it's a talk by Dr. Chrissy Bowie from Rhodes University.
01:19
Okay, everybody, we've now got what 18 people in the room that's including me, and some of the organizers, but I think I'm going to get going anyway. As I've already said, my name is Chrissy Bowie, and I'm joining you from I'm actually now in Stellenbosch in the mountains outside Cape Town, where it is very, very cold. Unlike England where I understand you're having a heatwave, or you were having a heatwave I am an emeritus professor of Rhodes University and I worked at Rhodes University for many years. And my field is higher education studies. So I've done a lot of research and supervision in higher education studies. But I also had the dubious honor of being Deputy Vice Chancellor at the end of my career at Rhodes University. And I was DVC. Academics, I was in charge of all matters related to teaching and learning. It was a time when South Africa was rocked by student protests. But I'll speak about those in the course of my presentation. Please could ask you to keep your camera's off. Just for the bandwidth. I'll switch mine off in a moment, I'm going to use a PowerPoint. I will be very happy to take questions at the end. If there's a burning point, stick your hands up. And I'll also try to monitor the chat. I hope I don't get too caught up in my own presentation. To do that. I'll try to manage to the chat and address anything as it as it goes along. One last point from me. And that is South Africa has waves of load shedding. And we just started a new load shedding run at the moment. And it's quite well, my area is sheduled for load shedding in an hour. So I'm quite likely to just disappear at one o'clock. So don't think I'm being rude. It's because the powers gone. And it takes and the Internet goes and it takes a while for the generators to kick in. So please, I'm sorry, if if I have an abrupt departure. But I'll always be very happy to speak to anybody on the email if you want to. And I'll put my email address, I'm CDOT Bowie at on you.ac A if you need to afterwards. So let's get going. I'm going to share my screen and I have a presentation. Okay. So what you can see on the screen is a picture of Rhodes University, which is in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. And you've only got to look at it to see how in appearance, how colonial it is Rhodes University. So some of Cecil John's Rhodes his money was involved in getting it going and it still bears the name Rhodes, which obviously is hugely problematic. I won't speak to the name changing stories, but needless to say they are ongoing So it's a historically white university. It is research intensive. So one of the small group of universities that produces the bulk of his research in South Africa. It's also one of the smallest universities in South Africa. And as I said, it's located in Eastern Cape, which is one of the poorest provinces in the country. So that's a little bit of background to where I worked. I was there for 22 years. But I also worked at the University of Zululand. And the reason I originally came to South Africa and bridge by birth, was that I came on an aid project in the 1980s, to the University of the Western Cape, which at that time, was at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid. And I found it impossible to leave just for all sorts of reasons. But mostly because I became hooked with the idea that I wanted to try to make a contribution in this country at a time of great social change.
06:13
So what you can now see on the screen is a picture taken at Rhodes University, from the student protests, and we had waves of student protests in 2015 16, and 17. And the protests were under a number of banners. So roads must fall. And you might be familiar with that, because of, obviously, there's Oriel College in Oxford, but also in South Africa. At the University of Cape Town, there were protests about the statue, the the Cecil John Rhodes statue on the campus, which was eventually removed. But there were also went into the banner of fees must fall. And then finally, the so called reference list, but I'll explain those. So what were the roots of the protests? Well, basically, a lot of it was about the inability of poor black students to pay tuition fees, as in other countries across the world, tuition free fees have risen steadily in South Africa. And as those fees have risen, more and more black students have managed to gain access to the higher education system. We are now rightly, a system where the majority of students are black. But the participation rate of 18 to 22 year olds still doesn't reflect the proportion of black people in the country. So basically, what that means is that if you're white, you're more likely to get to a university than if you're black, and particularly if you're poor, and black. The rising fees problem was exacerbated by lack of access to bursaries, and loans. So that there is now thanks to the protests, a much more established bursary system, some of it which is a loan system, but if a student passes, basically, a loan is converted to a bursary. But for black working class students in particular, particular, there was an inability to access loans from commercial banks, there's literally no collateral in families. So their families weren't able to access a loan to allow them to study. So there's this huge burden of fees. And at the same time, we've got data. And that data shows a really persistent pattern, and we haven't managed to shift it. And you'll find that in the council and higher education, vital stats series that some an analysis of performance in higher education produced year on year. And what that shows is that, regardless of the universities at which they're registered, regardless of the field of study, and regardless of the level of the qualification, black students don't do as well as white students. Now, many people, including myself, for many years have argued that it's the system that's problematic in South Africa. It's a higher education system. Historically, black students were understood as carrying problems inherited from their poor schooling with them into the universities. But from way back in the mid 1980s. And this was an idea that captured me. It was argued that the students aren't the problem, the system is the problem. It's the universities that have to change. And that idea of transformation of change was certainly picked up as South Africa moved into democracy. And you see it over and over again, in policy documents. But we're still seeking transformation. We're not a transformed system in so many ways. But of course, the other reason for the protests was decolonial theory. And I've cited machmood Mamdani. There. And Mamdani is actually in 1998, gave a lecture at the University of Cape Town.
10:55
He's a Ugandan scholar, and he was very, very critical of the curriculum at the University of Cape Town. But of course, Nanjiani is just one scholar. There are many, many other scholars who write about theorize decolonial ality many from the American Southern Americas. But I've cited Mamdani there. So it the protests came out of a hole, hear a lot of things. But basically, it was about black students being treated unfairly in the universities. And one of the things that you saw on the placards in the protests, were statements like you don't see us. We don't see black students. So, you know, people are teaching but they're teaching to a class. And they're not seeing that the majority of their students now are different to the students they sat beside, when they were students years ago. And another thing that was quite common on placards in the protests, were statements like you can say credit, but not her, Debbie. So characters in Afrikaans name, credit OB is a name in the Goony languages. So, you know, the claim there was well, okay, you, you white lecturers, you can use an Afrikaans name correctly, but you can't say my name. So that's the sort of thing that we saw in the protests. So I'm going to talk about the curriculum. And I'm going to begin with the assumption that the curriculum is not neutral. It's a structure that distributes access to knowledge.
12:58
And with that, access to the goods of the world,
13:04
and to power in all sorts of ways. I've kept the idea of knowledge vague there. But basically, I would see the curriculum as a structure that's implicated in power, through distributing access to knowledge. After the protests, most universities began some sort of curriculum review, or renewal projects, and Jonathan Jansen, who's a very well known South African scholar, he has a book and there's a list of references at the end of this presentation. And he, he did some research on what the universities were doing in order to start this process of curriculum review. I don't think it's got very far, I think most of those projects are floundering. If not, if he actually floundered. I won't go into the reasons for that. But I don't think it's been hugely successful. But what I wanted to do, and this is my own thinking, is draw on a sort of continuum of thinking about approaches to decolonizing the curriculum. And this comes from my own experience of being in South African higher education, reading the literature, going to conferences, and things like that. And I've arranged them along a continuum from what I've called weaker approaches to stronger approaches. And any any, if you look at Jonathan Johnson's book, I think what you could do is look at the work that's is reported in the book, and you could start to play some on this continuum.
15:07
Okay, so
15:12
let's begin. But I want to begin with the work of Bernstein, British sociologist basil Bernstein, who I think is really useful in thinking about the curriculum. And not only in relation to decolonization and what Bernstein does is he identifies equals to discourses to knowledge forms, if you like. And he The first is horizontal discourse, which is everyday common sense knowledge, closely tied to the context in which it arises. And it often exists only in spoken language. And you encounter that all over the place outside the university. So if I give you an example of horizontal discourse, South Africa is a big country. And it contains several weather systems, because different oceans, different ocean temperatures on either side of the country. So if you live on the eastern side of the country, in KwaZulu Natal, they then you might make a statement which says, In cuisine and sell it, or it rains in the summer. And that is true for the eastern part of the country. In the eastern part, rain falls in the summer months. And it's because it's water vapor clouds coming in off the Indian Ocean. That's not true for the western part of the country. In the Western Cape where I'm located, it rains in the winter, the summer is the dry, dry season. So that statement, it always rains in the summer, is tied to the context of somebody's experiences in the eastern parts of the country.
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So very, very closely linked to a particular context text. It's true, but it's true of a particular context.
17:40
Vertical discourse, on the other hand, is theorized abstract, systematized knowledge that can cross contexts. Now, if I go back to my rain example, an example of vertical discourse would be the explanation of the weather system that is often given in schools to quite young children. And I'm sure you all know about that, you know, sun shines on the ocean, the water evaporates, it forms clouds, the clouds move over the land, the rain falls over the land, and it runs back into the ocean, through rivers. So obviously, that's a very simplified version of an explanation of weather. But it's been systematized, the knowledge has been systematized. It's abstract, you can't see the water vapor rising of the ocean. And there's a whole theory in it about heat and goodness knows what else to explain weather systems. Now that knowledge will explain rainfall, if I get keep in South Africa, in the eastern part of the country, and in the western parts of the country, which have very different weather systems. So of course, vertical discourse, this theorized abstract, systematized knowledge that can cross contexts. It's the stuff of schools were introduced with his children in schools. It exists in written forms, mostly one would argue in written forms. And what it does essentially is it acts as a lens that allows the world to be seen differently. So it's like it's theory put theory on, like a pair of spectacles, and then you can see the world differently, you can understand the world differently. And importantly, it will also allow us to predict. And of course, this theorized abstract system. acties knowledge allows us to make hypotheses, which then can be tested. And scientists do that all the time. So you can predict a world if you like the data jets exist. And because of all these features, vertical discourse is often cited by the likes of Lisa Wheeler, Han, and other scholars who draw on beans Bernstein as powerful knowledge. It's powerful because of its its power to explain and predict, whereas horizontal discourse is stuck to local contexts. So two kinds of knowledge identified by Bernstein. Okay, now let's get back to approaches to decolonizing, the curriculum. And one at one of the most early approaches, it was to introduce examples and texts into curricula, African examples and effort, African authors, African texts, bring those into the curriculum. So many of the textbooks that are used in the universities are, in fact imported from the Global North. And when you look at those textbooks, they'll have examples from the global Norse. But the theories that the textbook books teach, they're also mostly generated in the Global North. They're not theories that were produced in the global south in Africa. So so any textbook is likely to contain these examples and theories from from the global Norse. There are our South African textbooks written by South African academics, particularly in higher education. And they also may well drawn examples from the Global North. And they will draw on theory from the Global North. And the other thing, of course, is that literature is overwhelmingly generated in the Global North Africa produces less than 1% of the world's research. And one one of the problems is that researchers from the global north, often come selves. And they literally mined the continent for data. And they publish on Africa.
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That they're not of Africa, they're not applicant. But but they they find Africa a really interesting place. And they'll come and do research here. And one of my colleagues in higher education studies, once told me that he loved doing research in South Africa, because the problems was so raw here. But that that research obviously, was being undertaken from a theoretical view series produced in the in the Global North by a British researcher. And it was mostly published in British journals and books, books, published publishers. And even when you get work done by African searcher researchers, it tends to draw on dominant theories generated in the in the Global North. So, you know, fine, you can cite African authors, but the thinking they are using thinking they are using theory. And to go back to my Bernstein slide, they're using the knowledge, the theoretical, abstract, systematized knowledge that's been generated in the global Norse. To do that research in African there might be publishing in Africa. So this was an approach to the decolonization of the curriculum that emerged very quickly following the protests. And I say that was a weak approach towards the left hand end of that continuum. I shown you I've shown you, and I hope that as I continue, you'll start to see why and how it differs from what I'll call stronger approaches. Okay, so another, also sorry, what does it do? What does that approach achieve? Well, of course, it does affirm Africans, African scholars, as researchers and knowledge makers. I think it does But then does it? If they're using theory from the Global North? I put a question mark there because of that, does it provide access to knowledge through local examples, many would argue, argue that if you, if you put an example in from Africa, students are probably better able to understand you'd have to have more evidence to support that claim, I think, I'm not aware of research that's been been done that will affirm that claim. But potentially, using African examples drawing on African research would have the potential to affirm and possibly provide greater access. But another approach, and this sort of leads on to providing access to, to knowledge to Western knowledge is is the use of Indigenous Knowledges as a kind of stepping stone. And I've got an example here. So a mercy. And it's a type of fermented milk, a bit like drinking yogurt is widely consumed in South Africa. And nowadays, you can buy it in supermarkets, but of course, historically, it was made at home. And when, when a Massey has been made and consumed, you need to clean the bowl, before you put more milk in to make more a Massey, because obviously, you need the right kind of bacteria to start the fermentation process. So an indigenous practice is to use a particular kind of leaf, an indigenous plant to sterilize the bill. And I've actually seen someone doing this, someone demonstrating it, and the leaf had a sort of silvery sheen on the back. And you could see as the role was cleaned with the leaf, some of the celebrates its sheen going off onto the inner surface of the bell. and Western science explains that as
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the leaf having antibiotic properties, so the leaf has the potential to kill the bacteria that remain in the bowl, the wrong kind of bacteria, and then you can put the milk in, and the milk will ferment as you want it to. So with that sort of example, what's happening is that Western science is taking over and indigenous knowledge in the form of a practice. So okay, the knowledge is, if I clean my bowl with this particular relief, then I will be able to produce good MRC. If I do that, that's the knowledge and I clean my bow therefore, as a result of a practice that emerges from the knowledge. What Western science does is it takes over the knowledge and practice and it explains it in its own terms. It explains it in terms of the leaf, having antibiotic properties. And and there's a lot of this. Some of you might remember the the there was a lot in the newspapers about it about a plant who deer which is used by the sun to stave off hunger and Western pharmaceutical companies. We're find out the identified the compounds in the hoodia plant, and we're using it to produce what diet medication and medication to that would help people you lose weight. So the science the western science takes over indigenous knowledge and practice. And it explains it in terms of Western science. And I've got another example of that here. And this was a book published last year. Big project. killers that hotel. And what they were looking at was
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rural students.
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Students really from quite remote parts of the country and their experiences as they came into institutions of higher education inside of Africa. But the approach that they drew on was very much using indigenous knowledge as a stepping stone to understanding dominant western knowledge, the knowledge of the universities. And another person who does this is Madonna and Fatima Dondo. And he was actually involved in the project, though he doesn't appear as an author of the book, and he has an article on it. I know that in Redondo he was teaching in a particular kind of program aimed at giving more access to students from poor black working class backgrounds in at Rhodes university. But what I've done here is I've cited from his data, and it's in this article here. And so this is one of his students he interviewed. And so the student says, there is a similarity between indigenous knowledge, like our grandpa, parents knowing how to diagnose cars, when they're sick from grazing, we went to a dam, so he's talking about his class, now. We went to a dam, we went there, they know back home, and he's talking about the village, they know back home, how do you detect climate changes that are affecting water, where you were not sure when you were growing up, you were not sure whether it's true or not. But when you experience it at university, you're like, Oh, I've actually heard about this. So what what madonn do uses that quotation from the student to illustrate is his approach to teaching, which was to get students to activate and ditch indigenous knowledge that they might have been introduced to and grown up with from being very small. And to use it as a basis on which to begin understanding the knowledge in the Bachelor of Science degree for which they were studying. And of course, you can see how, in this quotation, it's affirming, yeah, that I'd accept that as a some evidence of students being affirmed by by the use of indigenous
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knowledge.
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So you can use it as a stepping stone. And I put that approach as moving towards the stronger end of the curriculum that I'm talking about.
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Okay. I want you to move on now.
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To what I'd consider the strongest approaches, and a challenge, a real challenge. And I'm very conscious as I'm talking now, that I'm a white woman. I'm an aging academic schooled in western knowledge,
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and conscious of that, but let me begin with
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a story if you like I used to work up in Zulu lands in northern KwaZulu Natal and in eastern parts of the country. I was at the University of Zeeland. And I was told by a researcher there a botanist, who had written a Zulu herb theory. So she had categorized classified the plants used by traditional healers in their healing practices. And Anna Hutchings told me that traditional healers in the region treated high blood pressure, which they called the high high, very successfully using herbs so that they had a remedy for high blood pressure, what we know as high blood pressure. Interestingly, the healers were also drawing on Western knowledge when they named it the high high. What Works Hutchins told me was that the compounds in the herbs and remember she was a botanist, are the same as those incorporated into globe Global North manufactured medication. So if you go to a Western trained medical practitioner, and you get medication for high blood pressure, that medication will contain the same compounds that the traditional healers were using in the herps. But, and this is important point.
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The traditional healers didn't recognize the heart as a pump. Now
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I No had high blood pressure is about the heart. It's about something that the heart not pumping the blood as it should do that. But in western science, high blood pressure is is understood as emanating from a problem with the heart and its function as a pump in the body. The traditional healers in that part of the country didn't recognize God as a pump. And I remember and telling me that she'd been at ceremonies where a beast had been slain as beats bass was cut up to be consumed. She asked what does this do? Pointing to the heart and a completely different explanation was provided by the healers. So what I think you can see here is another theory of being and as a theory of physiology, underpins the practice of the traditional healers, they could treat what we know as high blood pressure and what they call the high high very effectively. But the theory underpinning that treatment
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was different. What is the theory? That's what we need, what is the theory? Because that is a theory that is of the South is of Africa
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but yeah, I know Hutchings was a white woman, a botanist. But she she worked in sunnah lamb for many years, spoke fluent Zulu worked with with traditional healers over a long time, and had enjoyed a high level of trust with them. But she herself hadn't actually been able to explicate the theory, she was more interested in producing this classification of herbs. But I would argue that that theory and other theories of a similar kind, not only for physiology for a theory of being but but for the world, other theories need to be identified and explicated.
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So, to go back to Bernstein
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indigenous knowledge currently exists mainly as practice and is communicated as horizontal discourse. That is, it's very closely tied to the context. Now, my domestic worker in I used to live in the Eastern Cape. When I was at roots university, my domestic worker was called to become a traditional healer. And her training as a traditional healer was a kind of apprenticeship. So she was apprentice to a sangoma to a traditional healer, over a period of many years. And she needed to go off and she would spend days in the bush, with with her, her mentor, with the Master, if you like the the knower would spend days in the bush. And she'd learned the practice of healing from from this expert. My domestic worker could read and write, but I'm sure that none of the knowledge that she gained as a result of this apprenticeship to a traditional healer was written, it was all communicated
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orally. So why
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indigenous knowledge exists, it exists as practice. It's communicated as horizontal discourse, and it will be closely tied to context. So if I look at the knowledge that my domestic worker developed through her training, as a sangoma, it would have been in relation to the plants that grew in the Eastern Cape. I'm not a botanist, but many of those plants would be different to the plants in other parts of the country, but closely tied to the context in which she developed the knowledge. So what I would argue along with others, and who am I to argue remember, I'm the white woman, trained in In Northern Western scientific methods, as it were, but but people like psycho camallo, and I've got a reference to his book. And if you're interested, I'd really advise you to look at Kamal as work. Very young scholar. But wow, his work is mind blowing. And Matoba Matoba has a chapter in commandos book, what they argue is that the theorizing, and the abstraction, making abstract, the systematization, of indigenous knowledge. And you can say the verticalization, if you're drawing on Bourbon Street, Bernstein, that's what needs to happen. We need African theory, we need African theory, which will travel across contexts. And we need to bring that theory into the university. So camallo and Matoba, argue that that's the task for African scholars for at least the next decade, at least the next decade. So it's not something that we're going to be able to do immediately. It's a huge task. And you can only I can't begin to say in any, you know, sort of rigorous way will lie about how you can proceed, you'd have to go, it would have to be ethnographic research, I think you'd have to go and engage with the healers, as my colleague John Hutchings did at zunar land, you'd have to go and engage there Or you'd have to go and engage with farmers, and so on, and explore through careful questioning, and so on and so on, to try to vertical eyes, this theory. So what I'm arguing is that a stronger and I would say, a more valid approach to the decolonization of the curriculum would involve drawing on indigenous knowledge that has been verticalized, systematized, systematized theorized and abstracted, it will be a completely different kinds of knowledge to the western knowledge, except it will, it will share these features of being able to explain the world across multiple contexts, it will be able to explain the world in the future predict worlds that we don't yet know. But it will do it from a perspective in African knowing.
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But, as I've indicated, camallo argues task for at least the next decade, we're not there yet, by any means. So I'll come to,
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to conclude what I'm saying. But I've got a few more thoughts. And this these sorts relate to work that I've been doing recently, and to a publication that I've been working on, and which is currently under review. So of course, curriculum isn't only the what of content, curriculum is a whole lot of things. It's who's being taught who's teaching, and it's also the how, of pedagogy, the how of teaching and learning. So what I've done so far, is very much focused on the watch of curriculum, because curricula in South African universities were imported, that the model of the even though African universities have existed on African soil for centuries, some of the oldest universities in the world were in Africa, but the so called modern university, it was an import thanks to colonialization. And as the the modern universities supposedly were established, so curriculum also came from the north. And with that importance of the watch the series and so on, you will also got the pedagogy.
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You know, the idea that you've got a lecture
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Standing in front of a class and lecturing, the tutorial system, the so called Oxbridge system of tutorials. Richard wants to draw on that extensively. So the curriculum also includes imported pedagogy. And because of my own background, I'm interested in pedagogy. And I'm interested in what pedagogy does to students. Okay, so here are some ideas. And again, who am I to do this, but some ideas that I think could be pursued in thinking about pedagogy in about decolonizing pedagogy. So, in that there's lots of work which looks at the roots of the so called independent, autonomous, rational thinker in the enlightenment of 16th, and 17th century Europe. And that idea that, you know, ideally, students should be independent, autonomous, rational, applying their logic, that dominates Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. I, if I think back, there's this work that's very popular. That's popular now. But it certainly was 10 years ago, so called approaches to learning research. And researchers identified two approaches to learning, which they call deep approaches and surface approaches, surface approaches involved rote learning, and just trying to remember stuff. Deep approaches involve trying to get to the meaning. And to use logic, and so on, and so on. And, and in those deep approaches where it was worthy, these independent thinkers, you know, and you'll hear academics saying, Oh, I'm not interested in spoon feeding my students or students wants to be spoon fed. Well, lots of those ideas, you can trace back to the privileging of this particular kind of thinking, a particular kind of thinker, or InLight, enlightenment Europe. And of course, that thinker wasn't emotional, you take emotion out of it, you take feeling you take being out of it, it's all about the head. It's about cognition. I think, therefore I am. Now that dominates Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, pedagogy. What would happen, if you d privilege the idea of the autonomous, rational thinker, in favor of understandings of learning as communal, and there's a concept in southern Africa, we've been through, and it means a person is a person through others. So you only gain your personhood through others, through being one with others. Now, many of the students in our universities will be deeply imbued in this concept of Ubuntu, they're very big, will draw on Ubuntu. So so the idea of, you know, excelling, being top of the class, and I am me, and you know, I've got 75%, I've got a first
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you gain your personhood through others. And
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in the struggle against apartheid, you saw some of the Ubuntu thinking coming out in the, in the claim that it we should pass one parcel. It was about the collective pass one pass all so so what would happen if you drew on that understanding of being and therefore of learning as communal?
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I'm not, I'm not claiming to know how to do that. But what if you do
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privilege this decentered this internet, Tom was rational thinker, and you you brought in the idea of being through others? And what would happen if you acknowledge that knowing can be more than cognition? You know, we do have some work in the global Norse, about embodied knowing and so on. But what would happen if you brought that in? Could you Could you build learning theories based on that? I'm beginning to think what I do think that you probably could, I don't know that I can do it or people like me to do it. But I think African scholars could do it. And then one more idea related to pedagogy relates to oracy and literacy. This is something that interests me a lot. So the development of the printing press in Europe eventually led to understandings of meanings as being fixed in a written text, before you got the printing press, press, and you got lots of printed texts, and most meanings were communicated orally. And typically they were communicated in poetry. And poetry has all sorts of devices, which allows it to be remembered, you know, rhyme, mnemonic devices, and so on. So if you go right back and look at, you know, the epic poems, the sagas of the Norseman, and so on, you'll see that leanings about society were communicated through poetry. Now, when you had oral poetry, you'd have a poet reciting. But the recitation would differ, depending on the poet. But that didn't matter. Because the same stories were narrated over and over again. And so the meaning resulted from an interaction between the text recited by the poet and the people in the context. So the meaning was, in the context, not in the text. Once you got the printing press, and the widespread availability of printed text, the belief grew, that the meeting was on the page. I mean, modern linguists wouldn't accept that. But that's the sort of common sense for you, it's there, it's on the page and you extract it from the page. It also the printing press, ultimately also led to the development of so called saps literacy. You know, you see that in the work of people like John Locke, Montaigne, and so on a particular style of writing, and you could track right that right through to writing essays in the university today.
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written forms,
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particularly genres, ways of writing, and you're unlikely to pass unless you can write an essay. And the essay is literacy forms, will inform the writing of theses, even in the sciences,
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and so on. However, we've got lots of work.
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And I've cited golf there. He was actually my PhD student supervisor many years ago. So golf argues that creators of aural genres in South Africa compose original highly complex words as they speak, literally, in the act of speaking, they compose these original, highly complex works. And he gives all sorts of examples, one of which is particularly genre called releasing the widow, which, which is when the brother of a man who's died, releases his widow into the world at some point after the dance, and he analyzes them to show that this is the case. So my question is in relation to pedagogy, can we dissenter literacy in the university and explore the use of oracy in teaching and learning literacy rules, but what would happen if we dissented it? And explored the use of literacy? Can we shift from essays text to other genres to allow for students to draw and literacy practices that they carry into the university? I know that many students write poetry, and I have a geologist, friend at Rhodes University University, who allows his students to use poetry about rocks. And he's teaching I think it's geomorphology.
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Fascinating, what would happen
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if we allowed students to draw on an illiteracy form, which they felt happy with felt confident with
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and we dissented the literacy.
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So these are ideas that only ideas because not only if If you're thinking about decolonization, not only do we have to think about decolonizing, the watch of curriculum content, we also have to think about the how of pedagogy.
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And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe. And join me next time where I'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between.
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
In this episode of R, D and the Inbetweens I am talking to Jamie Pei, PhD aka The Messy PhD/The Messy Coach about research, messiness and how we can challenge and subvert the academic system!
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to RD and the in-betweens.
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I'm your host, Kelly Preece, and every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers, development and everything in between.
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Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of RD and the in-betweens.
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In this episode, I'm delighted to be talking to my friend and colleague Jamie Pei from the Messy Ph.D.
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Jamie delivers some training sessions on messiness in research on the Research
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Development Programme at Exeter and also provides training and coaching for Ph.D. students
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and beyond that, through life coaching. In our conversation, we talk about messiness, in research and in life,
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and how kind of acknowledging that messiness and sitting with it might subvert some of the
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typical kind of problematic cultures and approaches to academia and research in general.
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So I'm Jamie Pei. I completed my Ph.D. in women's studies from the University of York.
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It feels like such a long time ago, but I officially graduated last year and I am now a life and Ph.D. coach,
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and I also do workshops and training for postgraduate researchers.
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So I've done some training with you, Kelly, for the University of Exeter,
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which I've totally enjoyed, and I'm now working on building out my Ph.D. coaching work.
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So part of what's led us to this is that you've done some journalism training for me at the University of Exeter,
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which has been really popular and I think has really just.. because it's really resonated with the PGR community and
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particularly in the way that you approach the, kind of, the research journey and this concept of of messiness.
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And I wondered if you could sort of say a little bit about
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what this idea that like the messy PHD is and how that evolved in your thinking and in your practise?
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Yes. So I guess I'd have to go all the way back to my own Ph.D. and maybe even a little bit before that.
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So in my previous life, before coming back to academia,
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I was a journalist and my last job before coming back into my Ph.D. was in fashion journalism.
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I was working for a fashion magazine and everything there is, you know, it has to be perfect, right?
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Like, in journalism, there is no room for messiness. There's no room for mistakes, really.
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And now I was like, given this world where like no, the messiness is where all the good stuff happens, and that's where things are rich.
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That's where you get to be curious. That's where the new questions and the new ideas come up.
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And so that was the research side of it, like the messiness of the actual research.
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But the other components to messiness is about the messiness of being a human being
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doing the research. You know, there's this..
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I think there's this mistaken view that because we are highly qualified and highly educated,
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that we know the answers to everything that we've all got to have our shit together
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and knowing how to write a good thesis or do good research or be,
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you know, be really competent in the labs also means that you know how to perfectly balance your life,
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how to be productive, how to stay motivated and all that other stuff that comes with just being human.
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But that's not necessarily true.
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And so much of the Ph.D journey like my own, as well as my colleagues and all the friends that I met through the course of my Ph.D.,
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you know, most people don't struggle with the actual work, right?
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Like people know how to do the experimental, how to use SPSS or whatever it is.
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People struggle with all the other messy in-betweens.
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And that's why I sort of came up with the term messy, because it's stuff that isn't really, can't always be clearly defined,
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that there isn't always a clear roadmap too, there almost never is like formal university-led training to deal with this messiness.
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Even though that messy, that messy journey, the messy experiences are really what characterise a lot of people's doctoral journey and experience.
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And I can go into that a little bit more.
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I can talk about this forever, but really, it's things like the emotional fallout struggling with work life balance,
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the feelings of imposter syndrome, fear of failure, deep insecurity that you're not good enough and that can prevail all the way through the Ph.D.
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Overwork, the guilt that comes with doing a Ph.D. guilt in terms of always feeling like you should be working more.
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And even when you're doing perfectly normal, acceptable things like sleep or cook dinner, you're feeling guilty.
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The kind of glorification of suffering and the messiness of feeling like my Ph.D. is not worthy
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or I am not worthy unless I'm suffering and how to kind of deal with those sorts of emotions.
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So I'm not by any means a trained mental health professional or a therapist or anything like that.
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But these are things that I've worked through a lot in my own life, not just in the Ph.D.
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Beyond that as well, and is something that I started to identify a lot in the trainings that I was doing
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in the kind of peer led workshops that I was running while I was still doing my Ph.D.
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You know, people, people are coming in to trainings.
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And yes, you know, the initial concerns might be, how do I write a lit review or how do I organise my references?
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But actually given time and space and all the other messy things come up where people are like, Oh, I'm feeling like I'm behind.
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I constantly feel like I'm not good enough, and all these other things come up.
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I'm feeling really validated and reassured to have their experience represented because I think two things really stuck out for me
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on what you were saying first is that,
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You know, I often say the kind of people that end up doing a Ph.D or research degree of some kind are people that have been,
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in some sense, high achievers. Yeah, for sure.
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throughout their academic career and are perfectionists and highly critical and these are the things that make us really good at research.
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And in some ways, they make us good at research, but bad at being researchers in the sense that..
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it begets the, kind of, some of the messiness that you're talking about and the imposter syndrome and the feeling everything needs to be fixed and
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plan-able and clearly laid out, and it's just not that.
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Yeah, yeah, and it' also that discomfort with the messiness, you know,
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because we are perfectionists and we like to have full control over how things are going to turn out and how we envisage things to be
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and how we envisage ourselves to be as we're doing that research and the nature of research is that it necessarily needs to be messy,
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right? Like, if it wasn't messy, if we did know everything and we could control everything,
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and then there wouldn't be the need to do the research right? because we would already know everything.
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Yeah. So it's like learning to be OK with the fact that things are not perfect and actually to see that messiness as a resource.
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And that's something I always talk about.
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Like, I always say that the magic is in the mess, and I know that sounds like such a sort of almost like Disney-fied woowoo thing to say,
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but especially in research, you know, so much good stuff comes out of not knowing or of confusion or initial confusion.
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And, you know, the not being in full control of things because that's where your data is telling you things or, you know,
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you're struck by new methods or new ideas or perspectives that you might not otherwise have thought of if you'd followed that plan exactly
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and perfectly. Exactly, and as someone that comes from, kind of, from an artistic background,
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that kind of idea of the knowledge and the productiveness and all the good things coming from the mess really,
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really speaks to the kind of artist training in me because, you know..
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That yeah, that is how we create new knowledge and new understanding, it is from the messy and with the unknown and from the discomfort.
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But it's not something that we are trained to deal with in life, let alone in research, you know, if you think about just,
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you know, with my head on and kind of the British education system from a young age,
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you're taught to put everything in boxes and everything's kind of measurable and neat, even though it's not.
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And no wonder we get young people coming to university and, you know,
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as undergraduates and postgraduates who kind of don't know how to deal with the mess and the
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discomfort because all we've done is try to kind of teach them that the world is not like that.
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Yeah. You know, this comes also of like,
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capitalist, patriarchal, colonised cultures, right where, you know, productivity is king, success, self-made success,
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all that, the drive being productive, being successful, being entrepreneurial and all that, that is prized above everything else.
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So I think a lot of us, myself included, you know, when I talk about all this,
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I'm not talking about PGRs and Ph.D students as something separate from me.
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I absolutely went through all of this myself and I still do, like, not as a Ph.D. student now.
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It's just the bar has just moved somewhere else now that I'm starting my own online coaching stuff.
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But there's this idea that like, you know, the whole Ph.D journey rests on what you produce at the end of it, right?
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Like, everything hinges on that thesis.
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The viva. What you have produced.
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But there's something huge that my supervisor also said to me midway through my Ph.D., which was, she said, you know,
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you're not just being assessed on what you're researching, you're actually being, especially as a as a Ph.D. student.
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And we are I know that we kind of rail against the term student because we want to be sort of regarded as sort of higher up the chain or whatever.
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But ultimately, we are still students. We are in an educational programme.
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And part of that education and that assessment is, it's not just assessing what we're producing, it's assessing how we're doing that research.
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And I think that is a huge element that isn't emphasised enough.
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And, you know, I was really fortunate that my, like I said,
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my supervisor loved messiness and that kind of creative discomfort and figuring out the 'how' of doing that research throughout the process.
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So, you know, that was very much built into the way that she supervised me and guided me through those three or four years.
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But I think a lot of people don't get that, you know, everyone's just got their eye on like the final product.
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I have to produce a perfect piece of research where my results match my hypothesis or whatever,
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where I can answer my research questions perfectly and everything matches up.
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Nothing must ever go wrong because then it shows I failed as a researcher,
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but actually examiners, supervisors, they're expecting things to fail, right?
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Like, they know that research is messy. They know that research is unpredictable. Shit happens.
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There's a pandemic in the world or whatever, machinery breaks down.
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People leave things in the lab overnight and electricity goes off, whatever. And it's not, like, what happens, like, what results you get,
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what the thesis is, is not as important as how you're responding at each stage of that research,
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what you're doing, what decisions you're taking and how you're justifying those decisions.
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And that, I think, I see now now that looking back and now that I've had some distance from it, you know,
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like how you're doing the research and how you are as a researcher really is more important than what it is that you are producing.
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Does that make sense? It absolutely makes sense that it really feeds into, kind of, my approach to research development,
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which is, you know, there's the elements of, we do of research development,
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which are about developing the research and your ability to do the research, that actually the whole kind of concept behind,
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you know, research development framework is looking at the researcher in a holistic fashion.
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And I think sometimes because, you know, we're so focussed on getting students through in x number of years and all that sort of
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stuff that we forget that actually it's the researcher that we're developing.
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And I'm really reminded in what you're saying about, say, Pat Thompson from Nottingham.
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I wrote this blog post once about and it really, really stood out for me about how the thesis is a representation of the research.
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It's a narrative that you're curating for a particular audience, and it has to be
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linear and well-structured and
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you know, a kind of, Logical argument that develops and all this, all those sorts of things, but that's not what research is like.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
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At the end of it, you have to produce this document which has this linearity and coherency that the research process just does not.
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And so, you know, then the representation of the thing that we hold up at the end of it,
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that we examine, isn't necessarily the thing that's actually reflective of what the process of doing it is like,
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and I always thought that was really interesting and a really interesting way to think about writing
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your thesis is actually, you know,
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you're telling the story of you doing this research and you're constructing it for your examiner as an audience.
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Mm hmm. And so you need to kind of step away from what it felt like to do it almost and think about how to kind of look at it from the outside.
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Yeah, there is this definitely that kind of disjuncture between the living research and that process of it.
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And the telling of it, you know, in a way that's going to tick the boxes to pass the Ph.D. as well.
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And for me personally, my experience of the research couldn't really be divorced from, like, the how couldn't really be divorced from the what.
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And there was a time that I was thinking a lot about actually changing my thesis
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to be more focussed on the methodology of it and the kind of epistemology behind it,
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because researcher reflexivity and all that kind of thing was really important to me.
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And in the final version of the thesis, I think does leave out a lot that is potentially more interesting,
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I think, and more rich because it's really about how I did the research and how I grew as a researcher.
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But obviously, like, that's not necessarily what examiners want. So that's another messy thing as well.
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You know, the story that you want to tell and that you've lived through your research and what it is that you are telling your researcher?
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That's a whole other topic, though I think. And the thing is as well,
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the other thing that's part of messiness is like, I think a lot of PGRs I come across feel this that, you know,
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we feel like we're the only person in the world who doesn't know what they're doing and everybody else has their shit together.
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And I'm always saying, like, literally nobody else does any fucking clue what they're doing either.
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Everybody is just figuring it out.
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This is part of being, it's a being human thing. It's not a research thing or an academic thing.
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It's just part of being human being, right? Yeah, absolutely.
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And that's why I think the, kind of, the work that you're doing and the route that you're taking, it just really, really resonates really,
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really speaks to me in terms of my experience because it is.. what you've kind
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of ended up doing is articulating something that I feel like I've lived,
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and not really known how to pass on to people, I've talked to a little bit about my kind of,
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about my journey and the kind of intersections of my professional and personal lives.
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But yeah, just, I think the kind of, the work that you're doing, the messy Ph.D. and the intersection of research and life coaching..
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Just really speaks to what my experience has been like working in higher education, I guess.
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Yeah, I just, I kind of, and I rant about this on Twitter a lot, I say, you know,
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you could have the most perfect sweep of training and workshops for your Ph.D. community,
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like, how to write the Ph.D., you know, workshops on academic writing, on software, on data management,
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all of that, but it wouldn't matter at all.
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Like, not a single bit, if the person is a mess, you know, and what else is going on in their life is a mess.
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You know, you need to sort that out first, and in most instances,
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Ph.D. students are highly intelligent, highly capable people, like, doing the work is not the problem.
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It's everything else that is around the work that usually is the problem, right?
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And also, you know, like you say, just because you are an intelligent person doesn't mean you instinctively know how to navigate
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doing a really intense research project alongside a traumatic life event
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Yes, and not to mention all the other structural things that you're dealing with,
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like the racism and the sexism and the ableism and all that you know, that's so endemic and in-built within the academy as well.
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Yeah. And then also dealing with the messy nature of research itself, right?
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Like, things being unpredictable and dealing with data that goes wrong or pandemics and all this.
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And it's it is a huge piece of work for a lot of people that it's going to be the largest
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independently done piece of work they've done to up to that point in their life.
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And a lot of it's kind of done on your own as well. You know, you're not necessarily working like you would in a job.
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And that's another thing. That's another part of messiness. Is that sense of loneliness, right?
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And kind of dealing with that, like how do you figure out your own feelings?
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How do you fit in with your community? So, yeah, I mean, that's something that I try and address in my coaching as well.
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One of the things that I found really palpable in my role in research development is the desire people have to come to me for the answer.
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Yeah, they want to come to training or they want to come and talk to me because they they think,
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Well, you're in this job, so you must have you must have the answer. And then they come to me and I go.
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Not only do I not have the answer, but there isn't an answer
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Yeah, yeah. And it's a really confronting experience for a lot of people.
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But why can't you? But why can't you give me the answer? I can't give you an answer that doesn't exist.
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Yeah, I feel that so much, yeah. It's really painful in the sense that, you know, people are desperate
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for you to give them the answer, not because they are incapable or any of those things,
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but because the system is kind of really rigid and really convincing them that there has to be an answer and there has to be a way.
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Then people like me swan in and go, 'no it doesn't really work like that, there isn't a way.'
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And that's exactly how it was for me as well with my supervisor, you know,
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and needing to know the right answer in a particular way and also needing to have a very rigid structure like,
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'Oh, I should be here by now, I should have attained this by now.'
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And I remember saying to my supervisor once, like,
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I basically need you to chase me around with a stick and make sure that I'm on track and like, beat me
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if I haven't submitted things on time. And she was horrified that I said that.
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And it really took me almost like two years to really, like
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It took two years for it to jig that, Oh, you know what, actually, I'm in charge of this completely.
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I get to call the shots. There isn't a particular way of doing this and only one way of doing this, and I'm actually not reporting to anyone.
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This is why it's another weird, messy space because, you know, you're not submitting work to a teacher to assess,
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so there isn't a right answer in that way.
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And up until this point, you know, in most taught degrees, there is some degree of what's the right answer or the right way of doing things.
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And then suddenly you're in this space where
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Like, actually, there's like 981 different ways that you could do this and a potentially infinite number of answers to this.
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Yes. So what we're saying is you come into a research degree and you're working with someone who's not your teacher and who's not your boss.
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Yeah. Independently for the first time. And so you've got to kind of motivate yourself in a way that you've never had
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to before, you're undertaking something where nobody has the answers for you.
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You've got to go and find them.
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You're used to things being quantifiable and linear and coherent, and things are messy, complicated and throw curve balls at you all the time.
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And whilst you're doing this, you need to navigate adulthood and life.
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Potentially, you know, if you're going through a conventional route, let's say
through the system,
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you're encountering adulthood and life and life experiences that you've not had to..
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Deal with before. Regardless of when you're doing a Ph.D., you know, you've got you've got to do with life and life events and a global pandemic.
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And. Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, it's it's a whole mash up, isn't it? It's..
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Kind of figuring out the expectations on top of all this as well, then you know, you were thrust into this community,
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which is extremely competitive and where there are already these existing narratives of what it means to work hard,
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what it means to be successful, what is considered valuable research.
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You know, these ideas that infiltrate around 'you should be working all the time' and 'working harder and more hours means you
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are a better researcher' and those kinds of horrible myths that kind of get perpetuated and re-perpetuated
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I really dislike the memes and the jokes on Twitter and on social media that poke fun at,
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like, Ph.D. is not having a life and oh, weekends, what are they? and those kinds of things
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And I get it that people need to blow off steam and and kind of make light of it.
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But inadvertently, it does also perpetuate this notion of, you know, this need to constantly work.
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And then therefore, if you're not constantly working, if you're not struggling,
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if you're actually finding your Ph.D. quite enjoyable, then there's this idea that maybe you're doing something wrong.
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So like on top of, you know,
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figuring out what it means to be a grown up in the world and surviving in the pandemic and learning a new way of working and researching and studying.
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On top of that, all of this is happening within this extremely competitive, highly pressurised environment,
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and you have to navigate that as well and set your boundaries within that space as well.
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And it's, you know, it sounds so easy, right? Like just set boundaries.
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Just say no. But what,
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What 'say no' for one person will look very different to what, you know, 'say no' is for somebody else and what those boundaries are.
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Nobody can decide them for you. You have to decide them for yourself. And that's hard to work through sometimes.
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Yeah, it's not a case of 'say yes to this, say no to that,
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say yes to this' You know, it's not a tick box exercise.
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Yes, absolutely not, and it's going to vary, you could be on the same project team in the same department with the same PI.
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And your boundaries will still look vastly different, right, from that other person. Because we are different people and our lives are different and..
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And therefore, our boundaries are always going to be different.
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Yeah, yeah, I mean, this goes for everything, right? And not just the Ph.D.
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Yeah, and that's another thing as well, you know, this tendency to compare that 'so-and-so is further ahead than me..
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they're doing better than me. They've presented at more conferences than me' and realising that like, you know,
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as well as having different life boundaries, people's research boundaries, people's research topics and how they're doing
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their research varies tremendously as well. Like, it literally is like comparing.. it's not just even comparing apples and oranges,
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it's like comparing a bowl of fruit with a packet of biscuits, right?
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Like, completely different. You know,
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and we compare ourselves using these unfair measurements and then we beat ourselves up for it when they're actually just not accurate at all.
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And then we get ourselves into more mess, right? Because then our boundaries are even more blurred.
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Yeah, exactly. And you just end up going around in these vicious circles.
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And then, you know, like we're saying earlier then that perpetuates itself amongst the people that we're
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teaching or supporting or that are just kind of looking at us as role models,
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even though we might not, you know, be intentionally kind of
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framing ourselves in that way, but looking at us and going, 'oh yeah, that's how you do it, that's that's how it's supposed to be.'
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Yeah, but even the person who looks like they know
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how it's supposed to be, has probably stumbled upon that by mistake or there's something going on behind the scenes, you know, like swans, right?
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I always think of researchers like swans, like you look like you gliding along really elegantly,
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but you're paddling like crazy under the bottom. And then everyone around you goes, 'Well, they can do it without..
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Without struggling or without it being difficult. So why can't I?' and we get into this kind of..
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Yeah.
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Yeah, that's something that I really want to try and normalise as well with my work, is to tell those stories of failure or falling flat or like..
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Exactly, I like to do in my training, I always like to do the kind of, there's always a moment where we go:
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And now we're going to learn from past Kelly's mistakes. I love that.
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And just kind of, yeah, these are all of the way, you know, because I think sometimes as well when we're doing training it,
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it does appear like we've we've got the answers and we know how things should be done and we know how, you know, it's important to take breaks.
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And I talk constantly about how important it is to take breaks, I don't take breaks, like, I'm not good at that.
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Yeah, yeah, I feel you. I still, if I am taking a break, I'm sat there feeling guilty.
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Yup, yup. The break I had today was going and hanging the washing on the line.
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That's not a break. Yeah, no, that's still doing something, isn't it?
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You know, and also, I think just because as well, just because you know how you should be doing something doesn't mean that..
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You are doing it that way, or that it's easy or that you can do it that way all of the time.
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You know, practising what you preach is actually really, really difficult.
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And so I think it's like that sense of being open about failure is really important because you're like,
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well, actually, you know, it might seem like, I know the right way.
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I know a lot of good ways of doing things.
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I know how I should approach something, or how I could, but that doesn't mean that I do it like that all the time or even at all.
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Yeah. Or you know, the reason that I teach the things that I teach is because I spent four years not doing them.
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And then now looking back, I'm like 'that's what I should have done.'
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And therefore don't, kind of, shame yourself for not doing the thing that you know is right for you.
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Don't shame yourself for getting it wrong or for..
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Sitting at a computer all day or working too late, you know.. You haven't failed.
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It's, you know, it's creating another sense of failure in a way, you know,
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you haven't failed if you don't achieve that or you don't kind of embody those principles.
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Yeah, because there is no.. to say that you failed then indicates that there is a right way of doing it, right?
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So you fail because you haven't done it the right way. But then there is no right way, right?
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And it's really kind of about figuring out what's right for you. And this is something I talk about a lot as well.
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Like finding your own work groove. That's another big thing.
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You know, a huge thing of feeling like we failed is because we feel, 'oh my goodness, I haven't worked 40 hours a week,
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I'm not at my desk from nine to five. I'm in the lab, but I only did two two hours out of the six hours I was there', whatever.
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And it's really about: it took me almost four years, I didn't really get this until maybe the very last year of my Ph.D.,
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and that is: so for the first four years I kept trying to be a morning person, right?
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So I kept saying, 'OK, I've got to be up at eight and get to my office and get a full day's worth of writing in it.'
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And every single day I'd wake up at like 11 and be like, 'Oh, I failed again.'
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Like, I didn't do the eight o'clock thing, right? And I did this for four years.
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And finally, like towards the end, I was like, You know what? I'm just not a morning person.
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My work groove is to start after 11:00, and that's OK, you know?
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And that's maybe not the right way for someone else, but it is absolutely the right way for me.
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Yeah. So then you're setting yourself up to not fail, right?
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Because you're finding out what's going to work for you and what's going to be right for you.
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Yes. I wonder if just to finish, if you could..
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If you could capture the philosophy of the messy Ph.D. and the work
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that you're doing in, like, a little soundbite or a sentence or..
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you know, whatever you want to call it, what's the core of it for you?
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If somebody listens to this podcast, which will be edited down from the hour and 45 minutes we've been talking for..
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however long this podcast ends up being, if somebody listens to the whole thing, what's the one thing that you want them to leave
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Listening to this with. I think it would be..
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And I mentioned this earlier. It's to find the magic in the mess.
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And what I mean by that is not to discard messiness, whatever that might mean for you.
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It's not to discard it or overlook it, or even to try to fix it or to gloss over it,
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but to use that messiness as a resource and to find the magic within that mess.
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There's usually something within that messiness that can tell you something helpful and creative,
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both for your research as well as for life in general.
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And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe.
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And join me next time we'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between.
Monday May 23, 2022
Monday May 23, 2022
In this episode of R, D and the Inbetweens I am talking to Dr. Simon Clark - University of Exeter PhD graduate, Youtuber and author of Firmament: The Hidden Science of Weather, Climate Change and the Air That Surrounds Us.
Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to R, D and the in-betweens.
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I'm your host, Kelly Preece, and every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development and everything in between.
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, and welcome to the latest episode of R&D in the In-betweens.
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I'm your host, Kelly Preece, and in this episode, I'm going to be talking to one of the University of Exeter's doctoral graduates,
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Dr Simon Clarke, about his experience setting up a wildly successful YouTube channel during his PhD.
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And all of the science communication work he's gone on to do afterwards, and in particular, the publication of his first book Firmament.
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So my name is Simon Clarke. I am a full time professional nerd, and I mostly express that through making YouTube videos.
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So I have been running a YouTube channel about various topics in science, mostly Earth science,
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particular focus on climate change since I graduated with my Ph.D. in 2018.
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I had to think that because it's been actually quite a few years and I also do a variety of other things, I do a bit of livestreaming on Twitch.
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I have a podcast and recently I wrote a book called Firmament, which is an introduction to and history of atmospheric science.
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I guess the starting point for me is about how you became interested in what led you to
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become a professional nerd and particularly in times of kind of science communication.
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What was the route that takes you from kind of being a researcher and doing a Ph.D. to what you're doing now?
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How did that? How did that evolve?
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Well, it's something that sort of spon kind of spontaneously happened over a long period of time in that I so when I was a kid,
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I used to want to be a film director like I was obsessed with cinema and the moving image and stuff like that.
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And so I ended up doing science because that was sort of what I felt like was a
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responsible thing to do societally and financially and ended up doing my undergrad.
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And did my PhD? But when I was in my undergrad, I had this opportunity.
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I thought to make video content that would be worthwhile because I was a state school kid.
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I went to a comprehensive school just outside Bristol, and when I applied to study physics at Oxford,
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I was the only no one from my school had ever done that before. No one had ever gone to Oxford to study physics.
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And so I had loads of questions about how the process works.
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You know, what were the interviews like? Did you have to speak Latin to get in? Did you have to have a parent who'd been to Oxford to go there?
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And I just didn't know, you know, these are for someone who's been there. These are silly questions, but I didn't know any better.
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So when I when I got in, I realised that I had something of a valuable perspective as somebody who could help the student I was a year ago.
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So when I spent a term at Oxford and I'd seen what life was like,
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and I'd also seen the admissions process from the other side of the coin, I just made one video about what that was like.
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You know, what life is like in Oxford and advice to people who were applying. And that was I thought I'd be done.
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And then it hit the big time and it got like a hundred views, and I thought that maybe I could do another one because I've lots of people in the comments.
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You could, you know who had other questions. So I did another video a couple of months later and then another one and another one,
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and I gradually fell into this thing about just these sorts of becoming the internet version of a of a
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movie director in in that I was making my own short films and it was something that I carried on in the.
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And I eventually ended up doing a series where I was vlogging my life as a Ph.D. student,
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and that was something that was very deliberately as a an exercise in science communication and in outreach.
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It was trying to show what the process of doing a PhD was like,
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but also what I was doing in my research and sort of telling people about the field that I was really interested in.
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And that got to the point where towards the basically in the final year of the Ph.D.,
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I sort of weighed up my options and thought to myself, You know, I think I could do this as a full time thing.
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It wasn't at the point where financially that was anywhere near possible. Like, I was not earning very much at all then.
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But I thought that with a with a sort of a year of concerted effort and a little bit of luck,
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I could maybe do this as a job and it wasn't so much a deliberate choice that I've made
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thinking it would be successful as an opportunity that I thought I would regret not taking.
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So I ended up doing it, you know, giving it a go after the Ph.D. and ended up, you know, where I am now.
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But in terms of why I didn't want to stay in academia and I wanted to do that.
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Sci comm media production, basically, I thought I didn't have necessarily the best time in my Ph.D.,
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I didn't have the best working relationship with my supervisor because it's the first time
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I did a Ph.D. I didn't really know what that relationship was supposed to look like.
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And so we didn't, you know, get publications out. We basically had to scrape together a thesis at the end of the process.
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There was enough science that had been done,
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but it was just so disjointed and all over the place and stop start that we sort of had to compile it all together into a thesis at the end.
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But that meant that I felt whether this was accurate or not.
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But I felt at the time that I didn't have the option to go into academia because I didn't have those publications.
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But more than that, I just wasn't really having a good time.
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And it wasn't wasn't something that I was passionate about doing anymore, whereas the video stuff I was,
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I was very happily staying up until one or two in the morning editing videos, and it was something that I could really see myself doing.
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And I loved that process of coming up with an idea and crafting it and making it your own video And in that video,
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doing some teaching, because that's that's fundamentally sort of how I think about my content.
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You've got a learning objective. You have some educational objective that you want to try and achieve,
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and you craft a video to try and maximise the probability of your audience reaching that objective.
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And that's a process that I really enjoyed then and I still enjoy doing now.
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So, you know, I have no plans to stop doing this. Amazing.
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And I think it's it's and I find this with a lot of people.
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I talk to about what they've gone on to do after PhDs or research degrees is there's this kind of.
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Accidental, or is this kind of serendipity, I guess, of following various interests,
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various parts of their lives and then that kind of coalescing into a career,
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which it's done really beautifully for you. it's something that my dad calls proactive serendipity.
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Oh, I like that where you're, you know, it's very lucky that I've been in this position,
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but I was only able to be lucky because I've put sort of all of the work in before,
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and I've made hundreds and hundreds of videos before I turned full time, so I had the skills built up.
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But you know, at the end of the day, it still takes.
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It's the whole 99 percent perspiration 1% inspiration thing like it's it's lots and lots of work,
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but you do need that break that you do that that bit of luck in order to be successful.
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And that's the bit that you just have to try and maximise the probability of, but is out of your control.
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So thinking about kind of. You know, you you you said when you were kind of in the final year,
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you were making a little kind of a little bit of money from it and not anything kind of, you know, to live on or anything.
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But how how did you go about thinking and turning that into effectively a business and a job for yourself?
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I mean, I'm not the kind of kid who who grew up wanting to be a CEO.
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I was very I was on. I very much am not still business oriented.
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So I mean, I personally, my personal opinion is there are two kinds of YouTubers.
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There are those who run a business and it happens to be making videos and there are those who make videos and they happen upon it as a business.
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And I'm definitely the latter.
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I am somebody who just made the content that I thought was interesting and trusted that if I thought it was good enough,
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other people would think it was good. And that was something that, you know, I just sort of put all my eggs in that basket, so to speak.
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And after I finished the PhD, I was like, Right, what are the topics that I find cool?
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What are these? What stories that I can tell? And I suppose just blindly trusted that that would eventually turn itself into a job.
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And we know that that I think I have been very lucky, but I think also that that is a general something that is true in life,
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that if you make stuff that's good, people will come to you.
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You don't necessarily have to do all of the the legwork yourself.
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You just have to make something that's good and get it out there and eventually think, you know, it may take a while,
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but eventually it does get to that audience and that audience then becomes something that you can turn into a business.
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But the process that last step is something that has happened almost entirely bungled through.
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I'm like the Mr Bean of the business world.
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It's the things that sort of happened to me, and I've been very lucky, but I have very little kind of wilful kind of agency over it.
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Yeah, Mr Bean of the business world is quite quite an image.
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So one one of the reasons why I wanted to have a chat with you is about the book that you've written Firmament.
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Can you tell me a bit about how
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I mean, what the book is about, but also how it came about the for you to write the book, how that opportunity presented itself.
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So I in terms of what the book's about first.
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So. So the book is it's as I said earlier,
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it's an introduction to and it's a history of atmospheric science and those two sort of key components of it, 50 50.
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Because when you're learning about atmospheric science in an undergrad or in Ph.D., the emphasis is very much on.
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Here are the equations. Here's how you apply them go.
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There's there's there's very little historical context and often actually very little scientific context to,
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you know, where these things come from, where do these expressions come from?
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And when I was an undergrad, my favourite lecture series was Thermal Physics, taught by Stephen Blundell.
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And there is one of the reasons it was my favourite, apart from the fact that he was an amazing lecturer,
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was that he went on these little historical asides and he filled in that context.
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And I don't if it was just me, hopefully not.
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But I found that knowing that historical and scientific context to why an expression is the way it is and how we came to know this stuff,
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how we know what we know was really useful and really interesting.
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So when I was when I sort of sat down to work out, you know, if if I were to write a book, what would I want it to be about?
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That was very much at the forefront of my mind,
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and I designed it to be similar to books that I read when I was in sort of sixth form, an undergraduate.
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So books like in such a Schrodinger's Cats or the Elegant Universe, or, you know, if you want to get grandiose like a brief history of time.
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So something that gets you into interested in a subject but is not necessarily very detailed in terms of the the academic detail.
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There's not very many equations, for example, in it, but it's something that sparks your interests or sparks your passion and provides that
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historical context because those books exist for physics and chemistry and for biology.
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But as far as I could tell, nothing existed for the atmosphere, meaning specifically the atmosphere,
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not just weather or not this climate, because there were a couple of books, have been written as sort of a historical introduction to climate change,
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like the discovery of global warming by Spencer Weart was quite a big sort of influence on me.
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But the atmosphere, specifically the physical system, how we, how we discovered it,
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how we understand it, and sort of how that understanding has evolved over time.
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Just nobody seemed to have written about for that audience before.
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So that was my my goal was to write a personal statement book that kids will say they've read on their personal statement.
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Hopefully they have actually read it. And then in terms of how it came to be, I like I said, I sat down and sort of worked out.
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If I were to write a book, what would it be about?
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And I, I sort of kind of wrote, I suppose, a rough book proposal in it mentally, and I think I must have written it down somewhere that I haven't.
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I wish I could find that original note, and I set it as a goal of mine.
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I wanted to write this book and I again the whole proactive serendipitity thing.
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I started a book series on my YouTube. I started a series of videos where I talked about books and reviewed what I was reading and suggested
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books for people with the explicit intent intention of that being something that a publisher would find.
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See me, see my social media profile and think, Oh, this guy's a science person who knows about books and seems to know what they're talking about.
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Maybe they should write a book and that that was a very explicit goal in my head of having a book playlist on my channel.
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And eventually, that was somewhat unbelievably one of my plans actually works,
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and I had an email from a publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, and they asked me to come in
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And basically, you know,
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if I had any ideas for book and I had that proposal basically ready and almost completely unchanged is what we ended up publishing.
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That's phenomenal, and I think you know that. You know, that proactive serendipity of going this, this is something that I would like to do this,
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this is how I can use the work that I'm doing and the platform that I have to perhaps.
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Work towards that. Yeah. Maximise the chance of having luck happened to you in a very wishy washy way.
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Yeah, but it's it's actually true. I was quite interested in what you were saying about the history and the science,
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but also kind of thinking about some of the the public speaking training and work that i've done,
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particularly with scientists where we're talking about kind of public engagement or science communication.
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And this there's always this real kind of like really intense fear of dumbing the science down for a lay audience.
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And I wondered if you could say a little bit about kind of what it was like writing or, you know, just generally, obviously the science communication,
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what you've done about your experience as a as a researcher who's someone who's got that kind of
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scientific background doing the more quote unquote popular science or popular communication?
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It's tough at the fundamental problem of science. Communication is that balance between content,
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meaning having something that is scientifically accurate to the best of our knowledge and is
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truthful and weaving a story that people actually wants to listen to or read about or watch.
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Because, you know, a perfectly just just reading the IPCC report for the context of climate change, for example,
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would probably be a video that I could make that would be the most accurate thing I could possibly produce.
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But the problem with that would be nobody would watch it, but maybe some people would.
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I don't know. Maybe I could do an ASMR reading of the IPCC report just to have the maximum number of acronyms in the title
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But it's that's the fundamental challenge, really, and it's something that I've oscillated on over the years,
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I think, and what I've eventually hit on is you have to pick your battles.
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And by that, I mean, you have to pick a level of science capital.
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So you know, this concept of how into science a person is whether that's through their interest, you know,
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in terms of podcasts or videos or whatever it is, but also, you know, degrees that they have and things like that.
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And I delight in making stuff for a high science capital audience.
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So when I give talks at universities, I can go into, here's this equation I derive.
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Let's talk about all the different components and what they mean, and this is applying it to this data.
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And this is why this data comes from and these are the problems with it and the assumptions we make and all this kind of stuff.
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That's great. I love doing that. But at the same time,
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I recognise that aiming for that high science capital audience is aiming for a minuscule component of the people that you could be reaching with.
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Second. And furthermore, that the goal of talking to them is to raise their science capital.
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But you're only going to raise it by a tiny proportion. It's going to be the thinnest sliver on the top of that.
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That science capital on the bar graph.
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Whereas if you aim for a lower science capital audience, you can do more societal good and raise their science capital by far larger proportional.
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And honestly, I think absolute value. And so when I am writing stuff, whether that's the book or whether it's videos, I have this audience in mind.
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I sort of have this, this learning objective in mind of who needs to know this?
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And, you know, what do they need to learn? And therefore, what level do I need to pitch this at?
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And once I've done that, in a way, the script kind of writes itself.
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I don't know if this is because of my training as a physicist,
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but that the whole fundamental thing with physics is you neglect information in order to make a system solvable,
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like you make assumptions about there being no resistance or friction or whatever it is.
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Radial symmetry in order to be able to write an equation that describes what's going on,
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and I feel like that happens with me when I'm writing scripts for for for relatively low science
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capital audience in that it forces you to strip down to what is the core essential of this topic.
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And once you've got that? Making sure that you're not saying anything that actually contradicts the broader picture,
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are you saying anything that if you fill in all those other extraneous details and you put air friction resistance and friction back in?
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Are you still correct? And that is really the fundamental problem.
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It's trying to render something down as simply as possible without making sure that you're not contradicting anything in the broader picture.
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And the videos, I felt like I've got that down to a reasonable extent.
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Now I think I'm OK at that with with the book, the benefit was that I had much, much more time to work on it,
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like in the writing process for a YouTube video is typically about a week, whereas, you know, the book was about 18 months to two years.
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And so it really allowed you to write something and stew and look at it as like, OK, now how would a hydrological researcher look at this paragraph?
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What would they say and thinking, Oh, actually, yeah, when you look at it from that angle that that particular adjective is probably not quite right,
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let's change that to be, you know, rather than significant use substantial or something like that.
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So it's something that definitely gets easier the longer you do it, but also gets easier, the more time you have to do it for a given thing.
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Yeah. So on that on that note about the kind of the time and the process of writing the book,
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you said that Hodder and Stoughton got in touch with you through the YouTube series and
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what you went for a meeting and you had you had kind of a proposal already.
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Can you can you talk a little bit about kind of the process of, I guess, agreeing and doing a formal proposal to write the book?
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And then also like the big question of what is it like to write a book?
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Well, the big question, well, I mean, I'm like, OK, right, that's OK for you, those in order.
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So in terms of I went into their offices in London and I met up with my editor iIan Wong who was
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very enthusiastic and he knew me from my videos and was obviously very keen to work together.
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And he basically said, Have you got any ideas? And I I I tried to low roll.
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There's this idea that I've been so stewing for years and years and sort of pitched that.
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And basically, we agreed on the day that this is something that's interesting, and I'm pretty sure the publisher would like to go through with this.
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What? So I'll send you an email with all the details.
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And then I go back home and then got an email from Ian saying, Right, I want you to fill out a proposal and what that is.
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And he sort of walked me through and it was basically saying to the publisher, who I am,
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why I should be trusted to write a book, what my credentials, why I think people would be interested in this topic.
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You know, what's the selling points of the book? And then a writing sample.
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So basically, what ended up actually being, I think, almost entirely the introduction chapter of the book.
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So it was a couple of thousand words like not very many that allowed them to see what my authorial voice was like.
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And I remember I so clearly remember writing that in a Wetherspoons in Bishop's Stortford in Hertfordshire, which is where I lived at the time.
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I used to go into towns like do a bit of work,
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and there's an image of me with a pint of Diet Coke in the middle of the day and this almost empty Wetherspoons writing this book proposal,
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which I eventually finished and sent over.
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And there's a brief period of deliberation, like a couple of days and they got back together like, great, we want to green light it.
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We're noe going to talk about contracts. And at that point, I realised I probably should have should get myself a literary agent.
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And I just so happened to have a friend of mine who had just written a book and you know, it was Andrew Steele.
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I should probably give him a shout out, actually.
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Andrew Steele, who wrote a book called Ageless about the Science of Ageing, and he had a literary agent that heintroduced me to.
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And basically, he liked the sound of the project as well. So he agreed to represent me.
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And then he spoke to the publishers and we got a contracts hashed out, which we then signed.
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And it was basically then right? You've got a year.
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I think it was. It wasn't exactly. It was about a year to write this project and that was the start of 2020.
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And then everything went tits up and the whole plan.
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What a time to start? Yeah, it really was. And especially because I got covid quite early on in the pandemic in the first couple of months.
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So I immediately I was like, right, I'm like a month behind already.
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I think we're going to need to realistically change this delivery date.
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And and also, it changed how I wanted to write the book because originally my plan was to go to
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the Met Office and talk to people in the archives and feature interviews with
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people and actually put myself into the book a little bit more a bit like how Naomi
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Klein does this and some of her her works and sort of be a character as it were.
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And that just was not going to happen because travel was just going to be totally impossible.
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So we ended up pushing the delivery date back a bit, and I just sort of got my head down and started working on it.
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I mean, originally, the plan that I had.
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Was to much like you'd write a paper, I suppose, was to write out all of your research to,
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you know, find all these these books for every chapter you're going to write buy a bunch of books,
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take notes from each of them, find articles online, find papers, take notes and then coalesce those all together into a chapter.
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And I did that for one chapter, and it took me about two or three months. So it was totally unfeasible for the rest of the book.
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And so what I ended up doing was more of a kind of rolling road approach of I had a structure.
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I knew what was going to go into each chapter and I knew what the big points were going to be in each chapter.
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Because at the end of the day, when you writing an introductory text, you know the science that you're talking about.
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But what you don't know is all the detail that goes in between.
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It's all the historical detail and the fleshing out of characters and little bits of
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information that you can drop in here and there that really make the book what it is.
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That's the that's what hangs on the skeleton of the science. So I ended up just sort of researching and writing, not immediately writing something.
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As soon as you researched it but sort of pulling together a document, pulling together notes and then doing a bit at a time.
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And originally, my strategy was I would write for an hour a day.
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That was my my goal in my notion database for every day, write for one hour.
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And I found that what happened was I would just sort of open my word document and you'd piddle around for a bit and then go,
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Oh, would you look at that? And time was up. I've done my objective and then carry on with the rest of my day.
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And it meant I wasn't writing enough, so I switched to writing a certain number of words a day.
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And originally I think it was 100 words in a day, which is a pitiful writing target, but is very achievable.
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So what you and I inevitably did was I would write 100 words and go, Well,
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yeah, but I've got the laptop open now, and I felt like kind of in the flow. So I'll just keep going and you end up writing a couple of hundred words.
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And then gradually just upping the workcount I wanted to write per day, so eventually writing 500 words a day and then a thousand.
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I think towards the end of the process, right at the end when I had the book in my head and I just needed to flesh out the last few bits and,
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you know, basically do the set dressing.
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I think I was writing two or three thousand words a day, but that was because the words were already written in my head.
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I just had to put them down on on keyboard. And yeah, that was sort of this little bit of a little bit of a mad rush to some.
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Suppose anybody who's done a thesis or writing a dissertation will have experienced as well. Towards the end, when you have that,
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that concept and you just want to get it down and then delivered that first draft of the manuscript and foolishly,
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I thought that was what I was mostly finished. But then obviously you have to do a bunch of edits.
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And originally there's there's the round of edits where you speak to your editor and you effectively ask,
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right are all the chapters in the right order and are the points in each chapter in the right chapter.
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And once you've done that, then doing a second round of edits,
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so you're saying right are all the paragraphs in each chapter in the right order, are they
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Is there a logical flow?
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Is there a story that's being told here and then going through a copy editor goes through and kind of goes word by word is everything spelled correctly?
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Is the grammar correct? Well, this kind of stuff. And then you get a copy editor who will go in sorry no
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That's the copy editor. Then you get a proof reader who comes in and does the same thing.
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And you'll get notes from each stage of this, where the the amount of work you do generally decreases with each step.
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But every time you'll get a big document, they'll say, right, these are the suggested changes.
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Review them. You don't have to do them, but we think you should do these things. And so there's that big block of work.
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And then a kind of spaced repetition almost of going through with a fair bit of work and then a little bit of work and then a tiny bit of work.
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And then eventually you get what you think is the finished book and you record the audiobook for it or in my case, I did.
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And you go into the booth and then you find a whole bunch of other stuff that you want to change and things that are very minor typos.
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That have just been missed up until now, and sometimes they'll be version problems where they'll be two versions of a paragraph.
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That one's slightly different, but for some reason the old ones are still there. And that's like the final time you have, you know,
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it's like gradually taking your hands off the wheel of a car and originally you're gripping on really tight.
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And then eventually it's sort of like letting Jesus take the wheel. Eventually, you've just got like a finger on it.
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And then as you record the audiobook and you send off the last sort of few bullet points to change the last few atoms of your skin,
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leave the wheel, and suddenly it's completely out of your hands and it's getting printed 10000 times and it's being sent all over the world.
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So that's kind of what it's like to write a book. I was interested about what you said about the audiobook, actually, and about reading.
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I'm reading if I'm. Because I mean, partly personally, I can't imagine anything I would hate more than recording something that I had written.
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But. What, what was that like?
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What was that like? Because that's a whole other machine.
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Yeah, I mean, so I the only analogy analogy that I can make is that so the other thing that I do in my spare time,
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I paint models, so I paint Warhammer. And it's like spending what you think is a really long period of time on a model and getting it perfect.
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You're looking at for every angle and you think that's absolutely where I want it to be.
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And then you put it under somebody basically pulls you aside and says, for the next two days,
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you're going to be looking at that thing through a microscope and you're going to write down every little thing that you find wrong with it.
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And as a process, I'm sure that it has made me better as an author.
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And it's made me better as a narrator. But it was a massive hit to self-confidence.
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It was definitely a massive hits to thinking that I knew what I was doing in the first place.
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Because, yeah, it just exposes every little thing that you've done wrong because there is no room for interpretation.
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There is no at no point are you allowed to change what is actually written on the page unless there is an actual mistake.
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You have to read out every syllable as you wrote it.
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You can't use contractions. You can't switch the order of words around.
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If you do, they'll be a little voice in your ear that will say, Nope, sorry, you've got to do that again. And so it locks you into to what you have done.
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And it was two days that were about eight hours each in a booth of just reading stuff
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that I'd written and going over a real journey with that because I realised that,
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as I said, I assume most authors do. I started writing the book at the start and then worked my way through.
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And that means that you find your your voice as you, as you go.
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Sure. And you will then loop back to the start after you found your voice and you know what you're doing and you'll edit what you wrote.
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But even then, I found the first couple of chapters.
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I was like, Oh, this isn't. This isn't quite what I wanted it to be.
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It's fine, and everybody has been very lovely about it and we've not had any negative feedback.
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It's all about the first few chapters, but to me, I didn't think they matched up to the image that I had in my head of the of the book.
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By the end of it, by the second day,
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I was really in the flow of it and I was better at narrating in that I was tripping up less and I wasn't mangling my words quite so frequently.
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So you'd actually go over a couple of pages at a time without fouling up and having to start again.
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But also, I felt like the book really got into its own.
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And so that was that was a real kind of journey of going in very naive, being really smacked down in terms of self-confidence.
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And then by the end of it finding, actually, you know what? This is, OK? You've done pretty well with this book, I think.
315
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Yeah, and that must be really, really challenging as well for someone who's used to YouTube as a medium and speaking much more.
316
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Fluidly and freely, I guess, or improvising? Yeah, that's the word, and having total control over and sole control over what I make,
317
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I don't have to put things through 20 people in order for a final product to come out.
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The other end, if I wanted to, I could turn on my camera right now, film a video.
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Not even edit it at all if I didn't want to just put it on YouTube, and it goes out to my audience.
320
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And you know, that's not something I'd ever do, but it's not.
321
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But I like having that control and having having that sort of final say over the stuff that I make.
322
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So definitely adapting to being limited in that sense, and it was limiting in terms of the audiobook.
323
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But also, you know, when you're writing the book, you're obviously having to work through other people and having people caution you and say,
324
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Actually, I don't think this works and all that kind of stuff. It was it was a definite shift, and I think it has made me better.
325
00:31:10,460 --> 00:31:14,180
And the book is undeniably better for that process.
326
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And I think it's also made better as as an author, because at the end of the day,
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I'm borrowing other people's expertise and hopefully using that to improve my content going forwards.
328
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:34,720
But yeah, it's a definite change to what I was used to. And so moving kind of forward to the kind of the publication of it, so I mean,
329
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:39,520
I'm interested to know what that was like to have it to finally have the book in front of you.
330
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:45,490
Yeah, I mean, that was so I.
331
00:31:45,490 --> 00:31:49,240
There had been several moments where I've been kind of like, Oh my gosh,
332
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:58,000
I'm writing a book like I have written a book and, you know, submitting the the manuscript.
333
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:04,480
The final version of the manuscript is one of them. Seeing the proofs of what the outside was going to look like was another one.
334
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See what the you know, the typeset version of the book. A PDF of what it was actually going to look like on the page was another.
335
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But the ultimate one was a couple of weeks before it was released holding it in my hands.
336
00:32:15,860 --> 00:32:21,920
They sent me a box of about 12 of them to distribute to people, and I was just sort of struck dumb.
337
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:26,000
That was it was a really emotional moment to hold this thing that I've.
338
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:34,010
I spent so long on, but also it was this ambition I'd had for years and years and years to to write it was a it was a really,
339
00:32:34,010 --> 00:32:36,680
really big moment for me.
340
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:43,640
And in a way, I told myself that because of all of that, because I'd had that big resonant emotional connection holding the book.
341
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:50,960
I thought that the actual release date itself wouldn't be that significant because we'd actually had some press before then.
342
00:32:50,960 --> 00:32:55,670
And I'd had sort of reviews from people who I'd sent early copies, too, which were very nice.
343
00:32:55,670 --> 00:33:01,130
And, you know, I just didn't think that was very much to do itself on the day. But it still was a whirlwind.
344
00:33:01,130 --> 00:33:06,410
It was still absolutely overwhelming because you you put the post out on social media and everybody's,
345
00:33:06,410 --> 00:33:11,210
you know, sort of overwhelming with congratulations and everything like that on on Twitter and on Instagram.
346
00:33:11,210 --> 00:33:15,470
And I did a livestream on Twitch where I was answering people's questions and I did a bit of reading.
347
00:33:15,470 --> 00:33:20,120
And the day just flew by. Like, I had very few things to do that day.
348
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:25,940
And I'm glad of that because I just I there was no way I was going to be able to do anything else.
349
00:33:25,940 --> 00:33:29,690
I was just so emotionally spent trying to keep up.
350
00:33:29,690 --> 00:33:35,180
It was almost like, hold the day was going away from me and I was just trying to keep a handle on it and keep a handle on what was going on.
351
00:33:35,180 --> 00:33:42,980
So, yeah, it was totally overwhelming and something that I think I'm just about.
352
00:33:42,980 --> 00:33:49,070
OK with the idea now that I have published a book and it's in shops all over the all over the world now,
353
00:33:49,070 --> 00:33:55,280
and people have been very nice about it and people have written nice reviews. And I previously I understood that in abstract.
354
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I think now I actually I believe it and actually understand that it's something that matters.
355
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:05,300
And so what? What's happened since, you know, after that kind of really intense day of publication day?
356
00:34:05,300 --> 00:34:16,850
What what's happened sense in terms of, you know, publicity for the book or, you know, what opportunities have you got as a result of doing the book?
357
00:34:16,850 --> 00:34:20,210
Yeah, I mean, I've done quite a few literary festivals.
358
00:34:20,210 --> 00:34:25,910
I was in Warwick University of Warwick last week and previously I had talks in Bath and Bristol and London.
359
00:34:25,910 --> 00:34:30,020
I'm off to Hexham later this year. I actually just got invited to the I.
360
00:34:30,020 --> 00:34:38,510
Hopefully I'm allowed to say this to the Jersey Literary Festival, which is amazing because I love Jersey as an island.
361
00:34:38,510 --> 00:34:46,910
So, yeah, you know, there have been great opportunities to travel as a result. I think it gives you a certain level of second gravitas.
362
00:34:46,910 --> 00:34:54,830
If you if you have a book and you know that that is, I think, probably going to be around for a little while.
363
00:34:54,830 --> 00:34:58,700
The other thing which has happened is that I am now constantly thinking of and my publishers,
364
00:34:58,700 --> 00:35:03,570
asked me about, you know, doing another one, and it's a process that I would like to repeat
365
00:35:03,570 --> 00:35:10,580
And so, you know, every pretty much every day now I've just mulling over ideas in my head about like, what do I think is important?
366
00:35:10,580 --> 00:35:14,210
How would I change what I did before?
367
00:35:14,210 --> 00:35:23,240
Yeah, like the stuff now that is sort of I think I have it in my head that I like writing books and I would like to write more of them.
368
00:35:23,240 --> 00:35:27,680
And that's something that I imagine is going to only intensify and grow over the years.
369
00:35:27,680 --> 00:35:30,470
And eventually, I do not want to stop making YouTube videos,
370
00:35:30,470 --> 00:35:36,110
but maybe eventually I'll be author and part time YouTuber rather than the other way around,
371
00:35:36,110 --> 00:35:44,960
because that was going to be my next question is the kind of the what next in terms of, you know, continuing with the YouTube channel.
372
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:53,610
Obviously, you know what? If the kind of the goal that you were trying to manifest was the right in the book, what's what's next?
373
00:35:53,610 --> 00:35:58,590
What's the next thing that you're kind of thinking about that you'd like to do?
374
00:35:58,590 --> 00:36:07,050
I mean, I would love to the project that I think is most would be the most valuable to do is a book about geoengineering,
375
00:36:07,050 --> 00:36:12,420
and that's something that I didn't quite deliberately didn't cover in firmament.
376
00:36:12,420 --> 00:36:21,030
But I think it's worth its own book and introduce people to what I unfortunately think he's going to be a big political issue
377
00:36:21,030 --> 00:36:28,470
this century is this idea of should we deliberately change the climate to undo some of the damage that we've previously done?
378
00:36:28,470 --> 00:36:34,170
And there are a couple of other things that are mulling around my head, but that's the one I keep coming back to.
379
00:36:34,170 --> 00:36:41,550
So in the short to medium term, I imagine that it would look like my future is going to involve making that.
380
00:36:41,550 --> 00:36:48,270
And if that one does well as well, because you know, Firmament has certainly done, it's far out performed my expectations in terms of sales.
381
00:36:48,270 --> 00:36:53,940
And Hodder and Stoughton have been very, very happy with it. So another one goes, Well, then who knows,
382
00:36:53,940 --> 00:37:00,510
maybe this is something this maybe this is sort of the way that things are for me for the foreseeable future is doing a book every couple of years.
383
00:37:00,510 --> 00:37:10,140
And if that involves me getting to meet interesting people and visit interesting places and just have to write about it, then that's that's fantastic.
384
00:37:10,140 --> 00:37:20,090
I'm very happy with that. It's incredibly, incredibly exciting, and I usually kind of try and finish things up by saying, you know,
385
00:37:20,090 --> 00:37:26,490
if if there's one of our kind of researchers out there who's listening to this, who's thinking?
386
00:37:26,490 --> 00:37:35,040
You know, science communication sounds like a really exciting career path and something that I might want to investigate,
387
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:41,470
what kind of advice would you give, particularly what they're still doing their research degree about what they might.
388
00:37:41,470 --> 00:37:48,810
Explore what opportunities to make the most of, to kind of put them in a really good place when they're coming out of it to.
389
00:37:48,810 --> 00:37:55,610
Yeah, perhaps think about going into. So the the toughest piece of advice I was ever given,
390
00:37:55,610 --> 00:38:03,950
and this was fortunately very early on when I was making videos was also the piece of advice that I give everyone because I think it's very true,
391
00:38:03,950 --> 00:38:09,620
which is you have to accept the fact that the first hundred videos you make will suck.
392
00:38:09,620 --> 00:38:15,830
And it's just unavoidable because you're not very good at it. But every time you make a video that sucks,
393
00:38:15,830 --> 00:38:22,070
you get a little bit better and you get to the point where you've learnt enough enough mistakes and you've
394
00:38:22,070 --> 00:38:28,130
learnt enough lessons that actually you can probably make something that's half decent on your first attempt.
395
00:38:28,130 --> 00:38:33,500
And it's the same in any other field. It's the same in drawing, you know, I think it's is it Chuck Larry?
396
00:38:33,500 --> 00:38:40,850
He was the artist for Bugs Bunny, said that every artist has a million bad drawings in their pencil, and it's your job as an artist to push them out.
397
00:38:40,850 --> 00:38:42,470
And eventually you get to the good ones.
398
00:38:42,470 --> 00:38:49,250
Or if you're writing the first piece of writing you have to do is going to be bad, but the next piece will be better because you learn from it.
399
00:38:49,250 --> 00:38:59,540
And if you are interested in making stuff, if you're interested in communicating science in a particular format, then don't worry about doing it well.
400
00:38:59,540 --> 00:39:03,140
And don't worry about doing it. When you're doing it full time, just start doing it.
401
00:39:03,140 --> 00:39:08,930
Just make stuff, because the first step to being good at something is being bad at something.
402
00:39:08,930 --> 00:39:14,930
And that is the hardest step. I think actually is to take that initial step of I just I want to do something.
403
00:39:14,930 --> 00:39:20,270
This is this. I like the idea of making a podcast. I'm just going to make it, and it will probably be bad.
404
00:39:20,270 --> 00:39:25,820
But the next time around, you'll probably learn from it quite quickly, and the second thing you make will be a lot better.
405
00:39:25,820 --> 00:39:30,080
And sure, maybe the first, you know, it might not be 100. It might be 10 or 20.
406
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:33,950
Things that you try are going to not be popular.
407
00:39:33,950 --> 00:39:35,060
They're not going be very good,
408
00:39:35,060 --> 00:39:41,360
but you're not going to get to the point to make something that will be good and will be popular without making those other projects.
409
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:48,350
So, so if you are interested in doing this down the line, don't think in terms like down the line,
410
00:39:48,350 --> 00:39:54,800
start doing it now and start learning those lessons whilst you're still in a structure, like doing a Ph.D. or lecturing or a postdoc.
411
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:59,240
That gives you that flexibility, and it means that you're not dependent on doing this.
412
00:39:59,240 --> 00:40:03,080
It's almost like a bird growing feathers before it tries to flee the nest.
413
00:40:03,080 --> 00:40:07,610
Like you don't hop out of the nest and then hope that you grow feathers on the way down.
414
00:40:07,610 --> 00:40:16,430
You get to the point where you're able to take off. And whilst you're still in a safe environment, so definitely just start making stuff.
415
00:40:16,430 --> 00:40:21,980
And in terms of getting the message out there, I'd also recommend people to develop social media platforms.
416
00:40:21,980 --> 00:40:26,630
So it depends. It's entirely down to personal taste and sort of the audience you're trying to reach.
417
00:40:26,630 --> 00:40:33,950
I developed my Twitter and my YouTube, obviously, as I was going through the Ph.D., but allows you to signal boost something.
418
00:40:33,950 --> 00:40:38,450
It means that you make something and you boost it to an initial audience of people who, if it's good,
419
00:40:38,450 --> 00:40:41,780
will then boost it to other people and they'll bosst it to other people and so on and so on.
420
00:40:41,780 --> 00:40:48,470
But you have that little Kickstart so that starter engine for, for attention and publicity, for the stuff that you've made.
421
00:40:48,470 --> 00:40:48,920
And of course,
422
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:56,150
the way the best way to do that is grow what your your social media presence is to start making stuff and for people to start organically finding you.
423
00:40:56,150 --> 00:41:00,950
And eventually, the content will get to the point where it stands on its own two feet.
424
00:41:00,950 --> 00:41:07,160
And the social media profile will get to the point where people want to find you based on the merits of the stuff that you're making,
425
00:41:07,160 --> 00:41:13,070
rather than necessarily just being your mates or your research group or whatever. And there's no hack to that.
426
00:41:13,070 --> 00:41:16,820
The unfortunate thing is you just got to you've got to start and grind it out.
427
00:41:16,820 --> 00:41:23,630
And the longer you put off starting that process, the longer it's going to be until you reach that end point.
428
00:41:23,630 --> 00:41:30,020
So start growing your feathers now and start making stuff. What a brilliant note to end on
429
00:41:30,020 --> 00:41:35,840
Thank you so much to Simon for taking the time out of his very busy schedule to talk to me.
430
00:41:35,840 --> 00:41:39,470
And yeah what he says. Go out there and try stuff.
431
00:41:39,470 --> 00:41:42,530
I know in my career in very different ways.
432
00:41:42,530 --> 00:41:52,860
To Simon, trying new things and being willing to fail at them have kind of led to the really the best parts of my job and my career.
433
00:41:52,860 --> 00:41:58,460
And look out for firmament in a bookshop near you, and that's it for this episode.
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Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe and join me.
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Next time we'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between.