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Goal-setting with a group: The Monthly Weeklies

20 March 2018 by researchwhisper 4 Comments

Jonathan Williams is co-editor of Queer Out Here, writer of blog posts at In Which I, walker of long distances and organiser of things.

In his day job, he wrangles a school database. He completed his PhD on trans cinema at the University of Melbourne in 2011 and has avoided academia ever since.

Jonathan currently lives in East Sussex, UK. You can find him on Twitter: @jonathanworking.

What are you working on? What do you want to achieve by the end of the month? And what do you need to do this week to reach those goals?

Many people are familiar with this approach to time and project management.

But sorting out what you need to do is one thing, while actually following through is quite another!

Photo by Cliff Johnson | unsplash.com

This can be especially difficult if you operate in a more solitary environment, as do many writers, artists, researchers, and people involved in projects outside of their paid job or formal study. Without the everyday structure of collaboration deadlines, team meetings, and so on it’s pretty easy to let the weeks slip by, to transfer an item from one to-do list to the next, to de-prioritise your own goals in favour of things that other people want from you. It can be hard to hold yourself accountable.

I started The Monthly Weeklies online goal-setting group with this in mind. My aim was to create a structure that would help me think seriously about short and medium term goals, a place to record those goals and my progress, and a team of people who could help keep each other focussed and celebrate each other’s successes. Read more of this post

Filed under Networking, Research culture Tagged with accountability, collegiality, goal setting, Jonathan Williams, Models, networking, planning, productivity, research culture, working together, Writing

Surviving your feminist research project

13 March 2018 by researchwhisper 10 Comments

Dr Meagan Tyler is a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University and a research theme leader (gender, equality and diversity) in the Centre for People, Organisation and Work (CPOW).

Her work is focused on using feminist theory and methods to address gender inequality and violence against women in a range of contexts, from emergency management to the sex industry. You can read more of Meagan’s work here.

She tweets (occasionally) @DrMeaganTyler.

There are always joys and challenges in undertaking research, but there are particular joys and challenges associated with conducting feminist research, and there is often precious little space in formal academic contexts to discuss them.

In part to address this absence, in October 2017, the Feminist Forum series in Melbourne included a session on ‘How to Survive Your Feminist Research Project’, and this post is based on Meagan Tyler’s contribution to that session.

Photo by Alex Mazzarello | unsplash.com >> “Protestors in Vancouver, BC as part of Women’s March on Washington, Vancouver chapter.”

Most of my colleagues don’t know what it’s like to expect resistance every time they present their work.

I recently found out that many of them simply expect polite applause or – worst case scenario – a curly question from a grumpy professor.

They don’t generally expect to confront accusations of prudery, rape threats on Twitter, attempts at no-platforming, or orchestrated campaigns from men’s rights activists.

But for many feminist researchers these experiences are all too common. It can feel as though there is a significant divide between our working lives and those of non-feminist colleagues. Read more of this post

Filed under Research communication, Research culture Tagged with academic identity, activism, Meagan Tyler, passion, research culture, self-care, working together

#MelbWriteUp – 18 months on

22 August 2017 by Jason Murphy 4 Comments

Jason Murphy is a Knowledge and Communications Advisor at RMIT University. He created and manages Melbourne’s Write Up (#MelbWriteUp).

Jason works full-time and is undertaking his PhD part-time, a topic on which he’s written before. He’s working on a research project that critically examines the role of marketing in contemporary society.

He’s previously worked in industry as a graphic designer and in the arts sector with the National Gallery of Victoria and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

He tweets from @murphy_jason.

#MelbWriteUp August 2017 | Photo by Jason Murphy

What started as an effort to keep the momentum of a writing retreat moving has evolved into a small, active community of writing support.

Back in May 2016, I wrote about the first #MelbWriteUp sessions that had taken place since December 2015. At that time, I wasn’t sure where things would head but was content to just go with it.

It has now been a year and a half, and I thought it was a good time reflect on the initiative, its value, and the challenges.

For those who’ve never heard of it, here’s #MelbWriteUp in short:

It’s a once a month, day-long meet-up that helps researchers focus on their work, block out all distractions (while still getting to be social), and collectively reach their individual research goals. (Write Up)

The first #MelbWriteUp sessions were more focused on providing a structure for the group by using the pomodoro technique. In a lot of ways, that was enough and has continued to be the backbone of the events. Read more of this post

Filed under Networking, Research culture Tagged with #MelbWriteUp, collegiality, Jason Murphy, networking, research culture, shut up and write, working together, Write Up, Writing, writing communities

Re-skilling

8 August 2017 by Tseen Khoo 3 Comments

Rusty horse (Photo by Marcus Schwan) | flickr.com

I was reminded recently of how much you need to keep exercising some skills as a scholar.

What you learn in academia isn’t like ‘riding a bike’ and there are skills that can be forgotten. In my case, I should probably confess that I don’t even know how to ride a bike so we’re talking about being way behind the 8-ball here.

The skills I’m talking about are those involved in editing a special issue journal.

The setting was as amenable as it could be for a good outcome. I was co-editing the issue with one of my best academic buddies. We had worked together on different projects before, including co-authoring a piece of writing, and we knew we could work together.

The journal was one I was very familiar with and had published with a couple of times before. It was a publication friendly to our particular focus and range of topics.

The general editor of the journal was also a good academic friend so, really, it was as collegial an environment as it could be.

I have previously edited six special issue journals, across a range of publications and with different co-editors or solo. Even so, I hadn’t edited a special issue for a few years and I felt rusty. Read more of this post

Filed under Building your track-record, Miscellany Tagged with editing, professionalism, publications, publishing, working together, Writing

What a student wants to tell you about research mentorship

18 July 2017 by researchwhisper 1 Comment

Mary Barber is an undergraduate student at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

She studies Chemistry and English Literature and spends her days shifting her brain from microbiology and organic chemistry lectures to reading Proust and Nabokov to running experiments in the lab.

Mary is a funded research intern at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre and works in the department of Cardiovascular Medicine.

Her current passion is using human induced-pluripotent stem cells differentiated into cardiomyocytes to understand how cancer treatment perpetuates heart disease.

One day, when she grows up, Mary hopes to be a physician researcher, treat patients with heart problems, write books, and do yoga every day. She tweets from @MaryC_Barber. Her ORCID is 0000-0001-5394-8071.

Photo by Tseen Khoo

In high school, I wanted to be a makeup artist. Before that, I wanted to be an architect.

Somewhere in the midst of my adolescent ambitions, an excellent chemistry teacher told me I had real talent in chemistry, brought me scholarship applications, and guided me towards a career in the biomedical sciences.

Five years later, I am a third-year Chemistry student at my university, slated to take biophysical chemistry, biochemistry, and physics in the upcoming fall semester.

If it wasn’t for good mentorship, I would undoubtedly be a different person today and wouldn’t have found the opportunity to study science and conduct biomedical research. I would not have found my calling. Excellent, intentional mentorship has been instrumental in guiding me through the jungle-like journey of choosing a career.

I owe much of my scientific opportunities and success to those mentors who have taken special interest in me as a scientific thinker and developed me into a good question-asker and answer-seeker (i.e. a scientist). Research mentors are crucial in counseling students through the scientific process and training them to be the next generation of people who push the field forward.

Most readers of the Research Whisperer have likely moved beyond my training and scope of expertise, but I would like to offer some perspectives on what a desirable and effective mentor looks like to the maturing student researcher.
Read more of this post

Filed under Research culture Tagged with Mary Barber, mentoring, research culture, working together

Does being happier count?

8 November 2016 by Tseen Khoo 7 Comments

Photo by Garrett Heath | www.flickr.com/photos/garrettheath Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence 2.0

Photo by Garrett Heath | http://www.flickr.com/photos/garrettheath
Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence 2.0

I attended a work/life balance forum the other day.

It was an event that was a first step – I hope – in addressing the relentless anxieties around the gendered juggling of work, caring for others, and quality of life.

These are endemic struggles in contemporary work life and appear in sharp relief in academia. There’s an expectation that universities should be better at this kind of stuff, that they’d be more aware, and willing to implement changes or embed structures that bring about change. It’s a fair expectation.

Much of the discussion at the forum centred on efficient work practices, and setting boundaries for ourselves and others around our work. For example, until someone on the panel told us, I had no idea our university had guidelines for recommended meeting times: between 9:30am and 3pm. It makes good sense, and is a very simple way to make the workplace more inclusive.

One of the forum’s panel members is at a senior executive level and passionate about the possibilities of working out a balance between home life and workload commitments through the flexible work options offered by universities. He encouraged staff to speak with their managers about creating better working lives by considering these options.

I was heartened to hear this. Universities, and many other organisations, talk big about being ‘family friendly’ workplaces dedicated to offering flexible working options, but these options are rarely well exposed and taken for a turn around the academic block. It’s like having parents’ feeding or mother’s expressing rooms on campus at universities – given much lip-service and expected to be there but rarely as convenient as might be necessary (see my relatively considered rant about this issue in my personal blog, A Simple Story). Read more of this post

Filed under Research culture Tagged with collegiality, research culture, working together, workplaces

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Goal-setting with a group: The Monthly Weeklies

Surviving your feminist research project

#MelbWriteUp – 18 months on

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What a student wants to tell you about research mentorship

Does being happier count?

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