On Collaborative Research and Writing

Like so many PhD students these days, I did many other projects while I was "writing my thesis". A mixture of trying to avoid the isolation that plagues doctoral study, insatiable curiosity and an inability to focus on a sole project for too long lead me to take any collaborative opportunity which came my way. The longest running of these was the "How to Get an Academic Job" project, which I joined as a bright-eyed, naive first year PhD. As our article based on the project has recently been published, now seems like a good time to reflect on the whole process.

Back in late 2012, Dr Anna Mountford-Zimdars - Senior Lecturer at King's Learning Institute, specialising in access to Higher Education and employment - put out a call through the Graduate School for PhD students to participate in a project on academic hiring, which would involve interviewing academics from our discipline. She ended up with 12 researchers from different arts, humanities and social science disciplines, as well as two international students (from Italy and Korea) who provided an insight into academic life and hiring in their home countries. Over the course of the academic year, we worked collaboratively to develop research questions, carry out the study and analyse the results. The first stage was a meeting with Anna and Charles, our learning technologist, which began with a discussion about what we, the student-researchers, wanted to get out of the project. This was a decisive moment: while Anna had planned a project on academic hiring - what do junior academics think helped them to get their jobs, what do senior academics look for when they are on hiring panels - it soon became clear that as student-researchers we were concerned about whether we should be trying for an academic job in the first place. Is it worth it? The interview plan thus developed to include questions about what academic life is like day-to-day, what academics value about it and what they dislike, alongside the questions about career histories. When the time came to analyse the results, the most interesting findings in my mind came from the interplay between these two areas. Of particular note was the fact that many academics gave human interaction - above all nurturing students - as what they valued most about the job, and yet it was one of the least recognised factors in academic hiring.

The research itself involved each of us interviewing two academics in our field - a new hire and a professor or head of department. In the article we eventually published, we recommended more dialogue between graduate students and staff about career trajectories, as the real life stories are often quite different to the image created by just looking as person specs or job adverts. Some participants also noted that it made high-up academics seem much more human to them, perhaps opening a path for more collaboration across career stages. To carry out the interviews, we were all given training on qualitative research methods and ethics, entirely new to some of us.

After our first interviews, we posted recordings and our preliminary thoughts on a private online discussion forum. We were paired up so that researchers from different disciplines listened to each other's interviews (I learnt about Management) and also wrote down our thoughts on them. This both allowed reflection on similarities and differences between subjects, and established closer relationships between members of the team. When we met up to discuss findings and next steps, all of this was celebrated with cake, a much needed part of any project.

After this meeting, we set up a working group to process the data. Between five of us, we produced materials including top tips, case studies and visualisations, used in a leaflet for students, a website and on a poster presented at a teaching and learning conference at King's. 

The final stage was just Anna and me. This is where the real collaborative work began. Rather than each working on separate sections, we worked together to write first a presentation for a Higher Education Academy conference on student transitions, and then the aforementioned article. Over tea, pizza, and more cake, we discussed the shape of the paper, what was important to include, and how to respond to the reviewers' suggestions. Anna brought expert knowledge of the discipline, I brought my linguist's eye for the nuances in words used in interviews, and for crafting a story out of data. Such collaborative writing seems to be the done thing in Education, it is much less common in languages (although notable recent examples include this paper on Modern Languages and Digital Humanities by Claire Taylor and Thea Pitman. I'm hoping to continue writing collaboratively if any volunteers are reading! 

Ironically, I'm pretty certain the article did not help me to get an academic job. The academics we interviewed offered a wide range of factors they look for when hiring - including enthusiasm for the discipline and collegiality - but, as to be expected, publications came out on top. And publications means publications in your discipline which can be submitted to the REF- as recent job interviews have confirmed - not an education article. But the skills I learned from it, the intellectually challenging experience, and the social aspects have strengthened me as a researcher and will no doubt influence my future work.

International Translation Day: Where do academics fit in?

On Friday 30 September the British Library hosted International Translation Day, an annual celebration of the work of translators - especially literary translators - organised by Free Word Centre and English PEN. It was a great chance to catch up with friends and colleagues, but it left me wondering where academics fit in.

The day began with a plenary session highlighting how many stages a book goes through on its journey from one language market to another. Chaired by translator Daniel Hahn, the session featured: literary scout, Rebecca Servadio; editor of Hispabooks, Ana Pérez Galván; Kate Gunning, who organises sales to independent bookshops for Penguin Random House; Sarah Braybooke, publicist for Scribe UK; everyone's favourite bookseller, Gary Perry from Foyles; and Fiammetta Rocco, culture editor of The Economist. Each explained their role within the field of literary translation and reflected on how their own section could work better. The general consensus was that there is too much to read and too little time, leading to the conclusion that "We don't need to publish more, we need to publish better".

While I really enjoyed this session, I would love to see academics as an integral part of the chain, both at its early stages and at the very end. Those of us who work in modern languages and specialise in literature spend most of our lives reading books in other languages, often seeking out writers who haven't found success outside their country yet. If we didn't love these books, I doubt we would spend so much time painstakingly researching them and writing academic articles on them, so why aren't we more instrumental in pushing these books to publishers, or scouts, or even to translators? I know there are some academics who do just that, but there seems to be scope for this to become much more common practice. At the other end of the spectrum, I'd like to see translations recognised by academics as more than just an easy alternative for those students who can't be bothered to read the Spanish or French original. The translation market, the way books are selected for translation, reviewed and read by the public, tells us so much about the way that the English speaking world views or imagines other countries, other cultures, and yet this is something almost totally ignored in academic circles. In this respect, Dr Richard Mansell's work on the translation and reception of Catalan literature is pioneering and a real inspiration for my own fledgling research into the way books from across the Hispanic world make it into English translation. More generally, I believe academics in modern languages should be promoters of literature in translation, given that among our core values is understanding people from different places and different backgrounds. Although I teach in the Spanish department, I would like my students to be curious about Russia or Korea, to be open to new ways of seeing the world, and reading translations can help them to do that. I recently asked my final year class if they read translations and they said no, with the exception of one girl having read Ana Karenina. I'd like us to have a discussion, between translators, publishers, booksellers and academics about what we can do to promote translations to our students and better incorporate them into the syllabus.

In this respect, I was particularly looking forward to the panel on 'The Current State of Translation in Higher Education', but found that the panel was focused almost entirely on how we can better involve professional translators in university programmes in translation and improve the translation training offered at universities. I wholeheartedly agree that professional translators - like Ros Schwartz, who spoke very engagingly about her experiences of teaching translation in university contexts - should be hired as professors in literary translation, following the model I recently witnessed at King's Policy Institute, where the likes of Dave Willetts and Nicholas Macphearson have been given professorships based on their work in government and the treasury respectively. Their expertise and experience of translation as an industry - as opposed to abstract theory - is essential for training future generations of translators. But I also think we could make better use of them to understand the translation industry as a force in shaping the way people in one country view those in another. In one of my modules, I'm asking translators to tell us how and why the book they translated came to be chosen for translation instead of another, or the cultural background they needed to translate that text well. 

Within this panel, successful literary translator Peter Bush spoke about his experience of the RAE/REF, the bureaucratic nightmare by which academic output is judged. Peter first submitted his translations from Spanish to English as a research output in modern languages. The feedback was that, although brilliant translations, for the purposes of the RAE they could go straight into the bin. The linguistic and cultural knowledge necessary to write a good translation was not taken into account. At the next research exercise four years later, and renamed the REF by then, Peter submitted translations not in modern languages, but in creative writing, and the creative writing submission as a whole was judged world leading. While this approach works if you are only submitting translations, what about those of us who consider ourselves primarily members of modern languages, who want to submit a mixture of academic articles and translations? Peter mentioned Prof Nick Harrison's Translation as Research Manifesto, published on Modern Languages Open, which argues for translations to be accepted to the REF. Although translations are already acceptable, the problems come from many places, including managers who don't want to risk a low REF score with submissions they're unsure of, and other academics who don't feel confident assessing the research quality of translations. With the impact agenda and recognition that translations are a way for academics to reach a much wider audience, it seems attitudes are changing, but a lot more training and discussion will be necessary. What I would like to see more of, and what was not even mentioned at ITD, is exploration of how translating adds to our research, and our research adds to our translations. Working on contemporary Venezuelan literature, I've found that I've learnt an enormous amount about my subject from co-editing and contributing translations to an anthology of Venezuelan writing in translation. I'd love to hear more stories about academics who have had a similar experience, and to share ideas about how to bring what we've learnt through translation practice into cultural studies classes.

If any translators, editors, publishers, academics or readers of translations are reading this, I'd really love to know your ideas.

Connections, collaboration, and communication: what I learnt from the LAHP Languages and Policy Workshop

On Monday 7 December 2015, I attended a workshop on languages and policy hosted by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership. Having worked for The Policy Institute at King’s while completing my PhD on literature and cultural policy in Venezuela, I was very keen to learn more about how languages – or, more broadly, language-based area studies – interact with policy. This thought-provoking workshop highlighted three areas of interest: how policy affects the study of languages, the intersection of languages and policy outside of academia, and how aspects of language-based academic research can link to policy. For me, the workshop can be summarized in three linked key terms: connections, collaboration, and communication.

From Jocelyn Wyburd’s facts and figures about the crisis in languages education, particularly the deficit of secondary school language teachers, it was clear to me that we need to work together across the languages to lobby the government and encourage the study of languages. To do this, we must also reach out to other disciplines, such as neuroscience to show the cognitive benefits of language learning, or social scientists to discuss multilingualism and social cohesion. Philip Cavendish from the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies at UCL gave an example of a department which combines traditional language-related research (study of a language and its related culture) with subjects including politics and international relations, while also working with institutions beyond the university (the FCO, Open Democracy, the Calvert Foundation). I found it a shame, however, that there is not much communication between SSEES and other languages departments. I strongly believe that scholars in different languages have a lot to gain from working together; not only the traditionally taught European languages, but also the Asian and African languages which are often limited to specialist institutions such as SOAS.

In the second session, Chris Murray (Institute for Public Policy Research), Helen Laker (Southwark Council), Carolina Gottardo (Latin American Women’s Rights Service) and Lucila Granada (Coalition of Latin Americans) all demonstrated the interplay between languages and policy in the real world, in sectors such as education, health care, housing and employment. What struck me most was that all four depend on volunteers. While it was suggested that volunteering could be considered as an internship for PhD students, I thought that as undergraduate students often complain that they do not get enough speaking practice, why not put them in contact with associations or charities? I would like to explore further how to integrate this useful language practice into the undergraduate degree.

The final session stressed the importance of putting yourself out there, meeting people, making connections and being prepared to go beyond your comfort zone. I noted that Hilary Footitt called her work on the language policies of NGOs ‘a strange project to have arrived at’, and I paraphrased Ben Schofield with ‘If someone offers you something weird and wonderful, go for it’. The panel encouraged us to think creatively about links between our research of obscure literature (in both Ben’s and my case at least!) and wider policy implications. They suggested going to conferences on subjects outside of our own to find links, as Hilary did, both with other disciplines and other institutions. From lobbyist Zacahary Bishop, I learnt to develop my USP/‘elevator pitch’, so that if I’m ever in a room with policy-makers they can tell straight away if there is an opportunity for collaboration. Finally, Ben (who is something of a Twitter personality: @haben_und_soll), reminded us that social media is a useful tool: we should let the world know what we’re doing so people can find us!

Given the focus on connections, communication and collaboration, it was great to have not only speakers but other attendees from a wide range of disciplines, including sign language, education and medical humanities. We definitely learnt a lot from each other, and left inspired to build more connections beyond our own disciplines.

For more information about the LAHP, visit www.lahp.ac.uk

Celebrating interdisciplinarity, collaboration and the digital

(Originally posted 1 June 2014)

In the past few weeks I’ve been lucky enough to participate in a range of events at King’s and beyond which have filled me with enthusiasm both for my own research and for the future of academia. These events have shown me the possibilities for collaborative research across disciplines, for making the most of the digital and for sharing learning beyond the classroom.

First up, on Friday 16 May, was Research with Reach, a full-day event organised by Ella Parry-Davies and Penny Newell from the Department English, which brought together postgraduate researchers from across the Arts and Humanities and a fascinating range of speakers from within and outside academia. The day was born from Ella and Penny’s desire to learn more about how to share knowledge beyond the academy while hopefully supplementing our incomes in the process! We gained useful insights into journalism, running public workshops, speaking at festivals like Hay, and making the most of blogging and social media. It was a particular pleasure to meet Prof Alan Read, the driving force behind the Inigo Rooms and the Anatomy Theatre, as I really admire how those spaces have been created to bring art and performance into the university and allow innovative ways of exhibiting research.

Then on Tuesday 20 May, the Union conference, run by my fellow Arts and Humanities Life blogger Naomi Lloyd-Jones and a very dedicated team of postgraduate researchers from across the departments. The aim of the conference was to explore and celebrate interdisciplinarity by giving new researchers – including many MA students who had never presented a conference paper before – the chance to share their research beyond the restrictive boundaries of academic departments and find connections. I really loved noting how research in philosophy, for example, linked with my research on nationalist cultural politics, while the very novel ‘paper as performance’ which ended the day not only impressed me but left me with concrete ideas for improving my own teaching practice. Explaining my thesis to non-experts proved to me that I really know my research and don’t have to hide behind long words, and the final lively workshop and debate session only reinforced my enthusiasm for sharing my research with wider audiences.

While the participants of Union enjoyed a tasty conference dinner, I headed off to Birkbeck Arts Week to celebrate the second birthday of Alluvium Journal, an open access, post-publication peer review journal of twenty-first century literary criticism. Having followed Alluvium and many of its editors/writers on Twitter for some time, I was very excited to meet them in person and to hear more about their pioneering developments in the production and dissemination of knowledge about literature. One particularly interesting case was Zara Dinnen’s use of Google docs to write papers collaboratively with friends and colleagues in other countries.

Overall, it was incredibly refreshing and inspiring – amidst all the doom and gloom that surrounds academia in the age of funding cuts and mounting bureaucracy – to meet like-minded people who are passionate about creating exciting new research and sharing it both beyond departmental borders and with the wider public.