Hello and welcome back. Today, we are going to start thinking about developing a research strategy. But first, I want to talk through your projects. You have 10 minutes to make notes on the following.
Are We On Track?
I want to start by pushing you to go a bit further thinking through your projects. Make notes on the following.
- What is your current idea for a project? Summarise in 1 sentence.
- How much do you care about the project you are proposing (from 1-10, where “1” is “very little”, and “10” is “I care so much I could burst”)? Be honest, and don’t pretend! Decide on a clear number.
- What about the project matters to you personally? What personal experience do you have that anchors your interest in this project?
- Are there any things that you care about more than this project? List some of them.
- If you have any answers to question 4 (above), what is stopping you from building projects around these ideas?
We’ll talk through this in groups then feed back.
Research Strategies
Okay. Let’s move on to talking about research strategies. We’ll continue this next week as well.
A research project starts with a hunch, the beginnings of the beginnings of an idea, a sense that if we go in direction X, then something interesting will come of it.
Research is about exploring this space where we do not yet know. And because we do not yet know what is going to come from it, then we have to give enough scope to allow these things to arise in their own good time. The philosopher Michel Serres makes the distinction between “seeking”, in which we already know what we want to find out, and “finding”, where we set out with an openness to what we might discover. True research, he says, is always a matter of finding. And all good research needs this kind of openness. What initial questions do you have? What do you want to know?
Getting Started
First, if you want to do some research, you need some genuine questions. You may have an idea for a project, but this idea may be a bit fuzzy. Or you may have a clear plan. But the best way to move forward can often be to set out some clear and unambiguous questions that you want to find the answers to.These might be questions about facts in the world (what is the case). They might be questions about how to conduct your research. They might be questions about why this topic matters. They might be questions about who to talk to, where to go, or when you can do the research. But they need to be precise question. The clearer you can be about the questions that you need to ask, the easier they will be to answer and to start bujilding a plan.
When you get an idea of the kinds of questions that interest you, then you can begin to get an idea of the kind of research that you want to undertake. When you have a list of questions, then you can start something like a plan. How will you go about researching all this? What resources can you use? How will you manage your time?
You have 10 minutes to write a series of questions. Put your current research title at the top, and then put at least ten questions that you have that are things that you are curious about, or want to know more about. Focus on what questions: questions that are not about the practicalities of research, but about what is the case, in relation to your topic. So these are things that you don’t know, but that you want to know. You need to submit this on Canvas.
We’ll talk through in a bit.
Planning Your Research
Once you have some questions, you need to work out a plan, however informally or formally. Think about how you are going to answer these things. The first question here is: What do I need to do find out more about this? You may decide you need any of the following:
- Book / journal research
- Internet research
- Contacting experts
- Visiting places
- Learning new skills
- Working with focus groups etc.
- Interviews
- Participant observation
- Exploring new writing practices (auto-ethnography, life writing, experimental writing)
- Creative practices
- Case studies
When you have an idea of what you need to do, then you can start to plan the doing of it in more practical terms. You may want to come up with a research timetable and start thinking about practicalities. Different kinds of project require different kinds of research. You may need to go and spend some time in the locations you are writing about. Your research may be entirely library based. But it is good to work out fairly precisely how you might go about answering your research questions.
Go back to your work on Canvas, and add responses to your own posts to list some of your. Again, you have 10 minutes.
The Road Ahead…
Remember that you need to put the time in early to get focussed and to shape your proposal. Next week, we’ll be talking more about concrete research strategies. On Thursday, we’ll have a group discussion session. Email me if you are choosing to work independently instead.
On Tuesday next week, we’re going to be exploring how to do proper scholarly research. And I’ll give you some topics to research in groups to practice.