How did we get here?
Why are we now discussing research within our own institution? Have I missed something? I am genuinely confused where is this coming from.
Am I supposed to do a research study on UAL? On my colleagues?
I am lacking context.
I found the reading a bit difficult and too long, and I was very unclear what I was supposed to get from the text. … Great start. :S Fine.
“Researching my own institution. “
I am an ethnographer, I got this one in the bag? I feel I should.
In fact, I am coming to the conclusion that a thorough ethnographic and anthropological practice is an extremely transferrable skillset that heavily informs my stance in social settings and thus is very transferrable into a valid pedagogy which I am beginning to articulate here, and for my (S)FHEA.
I will focus on 2 aspects for how an ethnographic training can be a fruitful base for a pedagogical practice. I will discuss practical considerations (facilitation, in-situ reflection, people-management) and theoretical ones (institutional critique and meta-critiques and meta-reflexive practices whist in-action).
ONE
Good ethnography requires good quality data.
Helen Newing trained me. (Thats a humble-brag. She is a bit like the Anna Wintour of Conservation Biology.)
After 10 weeks of social-science methods for conservation she ended the class with one final comment. The most important factor to getting good quality data from your informants is …
“the quality of the food.”
Once can only use advance coding methodologies and statistical inference and theme-mapping etc, when the interview quality is great. All this analytical training is – in a very explicit way and manner – contingent on… the happiness and satisfaction of the informants… in a way on the quality of the food you are serving.
Yes; – the bodies and comfort of your informants matters. Their wellbeing and the outcome of the research are fundamentally interconnected.
Put in this way this obviously makes sense; but considering the physical and emotional wellbeing of informants
When reflecting back on Duna’s work I dug out Helen Newing’s methods book. An outstanding publication which – to this day – is a core staple in my academic and teaching practice.
Adding this volute to the UAL catalogue was one of the first things I did when I started at UAL.
Despite being a book for “conservation biology” its clarity, brevity and thoroughness render it still an excellent introduction – even when teaching “creative computing” and philosophy.
Newing, H., 2010. Conducting Research in Conservation. Routledge.
This book, together with the sensitivities and methods of Biomythography (such as Audre Lorde’s Zami) – are now steering my practice. They are both legs I stand on;
one being a thorough grounding in empiricism (unbothered by the qualitative-quantitative gap) and
the other leg being my artistic practice of using poetry and text as epistemological battleground for decolonial emancipation.
Fin.
