The journey is on an upward trend but has been, shall we say, challenging so far. To be honest, I struggled a lot. By the end of last year I was questioning whether I had made the right choice to undertake a PhD, questioning whether I was intelligent enough to undertake one, considering quitting. Luckily I didn’t, and also luckily, through conversations with Bev we realised that the only thing wrong was my choice of discipline. It seems my four years working with design researchers, even in a professional services role rather than academic, had given me a design research outlook. Basically, I was trying to fit my burgeoning design research thoughts and skills into a sociology framework and it just wasn’t going to fit. And was extremely frustrating for me and my supervisors.
Once Bev and I had chatted about this, and I had had time to think it over, I decided to request to move to Imagination & design research – best decision ever.
I am now in a much better place, a much better frame of mind, and feel much better equipped to get this done.
Literature
I spent a lot of time trying to understand sociology, the terminology, the background, the ideas. Not wasted, but gladly put aside.
I was intrigued by the term ‘boundary spanner’ which seems to define at least what I do quite well. I have read some papers, mostly discussing boundary spanners in terms of industry and technology rather than in academia.
I’ve read about engagement and collaboration, building trust (although I prefer the term ‘earning’ rather than building.
There’s a paper I came across – “Developing an Infrastructure to Cultivate Equitable and Sustainable Community-Academic Research Partnerships: Meharry Community Engagement Core – so I will be mining the bibliography to see where that could lead me.
Writing
Sadly not much, I know I need to get into a better habit of writing. I do journal and make notes but I haven’t written anything that I feel is of substance apart from the doc I have added to Teams.
Not making an excuse, however I feel that my confusion caused by being in the wrong discipline meant that I was reluctant to write as I felt I could not make any coherent sense.