SIAH Personal Life of Research Workshops

In January 2022, SIAH ran a series of workshops in which colleagues aired a specific research problem, issue, question, or challenge in a small group with a view to helping each other get through and past impasses in their progress that were a result of the pressures, restrictions and threats of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These informal and collegial workshops included colleagues from both schools and were a mix of Levels 5 and 6. Issues individuals shared included: data from a previous project that ended before the pandemic and now seemed out of date for its purposes; finding the right funding body for a multi-interdisciplinary project proposal; how to make the value of practice-based research recognizable and have impact on the key issues of our times; new research questions and values not aligning with pre-pandemic research projects; managing interpersonal differences in an interdisciplinary collaboration; new ways of doing archival research during lockdown and ongoing restrictions; finding new forms and outlets for project outputs while large admin job constrains research time; and explaining disciplinary methodologies and language to a different disciplinary audience.

The feedback from participants was positive with praise for the informal and collegial tone and experience of the workshops, while still having enough format to feel familiar and organised. Most important was the peer-to-peer feedback and conversation in which colleagues learned about different types of work, offered advice and sympathy, and got some perspective and encouragement in a supportive environment.

All said the workshops should be repeated, at least annually, and we hope to do this in both open calls and some targeted workshops around methodologies.