I'm just a girl who can't say no

Almost a month since my last post. Where does the time go? At the moment I feel like taking time out to do this is both an indulgence and a necessity. It's an indulgence because I have two papers to write for various meetings and conferences in June, both on topics I know very little about. However, one of them (on Sen's Capabilities Approach) will prove useful for thinking round my thesis and the other (on the ethics of video-narratives, following on from the workshop I did) is something I'm very interested in. And also I am becoming ever more aware of the need to get some things published coz next year at this time I'm going to have to be thinking about jobs. Hence the title of this post. I did actually say no to some teaching last week - now that really was going to be too much. Ordinarily it might have been OK but the offer co-incided with a very challenging time for me in my other life as a mum, wife and ex-wife. I do tend to get teeth-gnashingly frustrated when I can't devote my whole self to my work and then I remind myself that one of the reasons I don't have much time for anything else is the the way academic life impinges on everything else. It is very hard not to conceive of work as making first claims on my time. When I worked in financial services I was able to take 'time out' because, for one thing, the office was shut and we could only take files off site in exceptional circumstances. This was a huge blessing and I miss being able to do that. So doing this blog is necessary because it sends a signal that there is more to life than theses, papers and conferences.

Ragpicking and Quilting

I continue to surprise myself. After a great deal of frustration I have now managed to change the template on my blog. And of course it was easy peasy lemon squeezy. This is a metaphor for learning of course - or learning as I understand it - where a bit of hard graft and thinking I'll never 'get' it is followed by the satisfaction of getting there anyway. Whether in this digital age, where everything moves so fast, this kind of learning model still has any relevance I don't know.

Anyhoo - I have chosen a sort of quilting theme (there wasn't much choice but this does fit in with my thoughts really). Having thought this is not an appropriate metaphor for my methodology (I used it when doing my MA dissertation), I have recently realised that in doing my thesis I'm still making a patchwork quilt - picking up bits and pieces and turning them into something else, hopefully something useful and beautiful. Quilting is of course a feminist metaphor and one I feel content to return to. This time I'm going to try to actually make a small quilt with a view to then presenting it at conferences instead of a written paper - the time feels right. Although I doubt my handicraft abilities, doing this blog when I thought I wouldn't ever be able to, has given me the confidence that maybe it'll be OK. I feel I have to try.

Swings and roundabouts

I haven't posted anything for a while because all my time has been taken up with stuggling with some of the ideas I've had about my thesis. It's been a bit of a business and seemed to take over my life. I don't recall doing anything for the past three weeks other than think things through, write them down, delete them and start again. However, on Monday I began a paper for a seminar that I had to do as part of the department's research training programme. I started by trying to give an overview and a bit of background to what I've been up to, which prompted me to return to my aims, objectives and research questions. In turn this prompted me to do a stock-taking of where I am. To cut a long story short, I then was able to clarify and crystallise some of what had been giving me sleepless nights. When I tried to find a metaphor for this process I came up with the title of this post. It's amazing how I seem to swing away from thoughts and concepts and theories only to return to them later. Or when it seems I have been aimlessly and unproductively going round in cirlcles I discover that I have been observing what is around me which has given me a richer perspective overall.

To put some flesh on these somewhat esoteric bones, I was writing and deleting paragraphs in my paper when it suddenly dawned on me that, actually, at one point ,I had known what I was aiming for. So, after returning to my original aims, I started writing in earnest, pulling out books I had read and returned to the shelf and notes I had made and then stuck in a drawer (being me, all alphabetically order and filed). I was still amending the paper when I delivered it on Thursday. Obviously it had its 'follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies' but it still made fundamental sense to me. I can now stop wondering what the heck I'm doing. And actually, I have always known. All that has happened is that I haven't stayed rooted to the spot. I've been on my travels but now I'm back with some of my old familiar ideas. I look forward to settling down with them and a cup of tea to negotiate how my adventures can be woven into our relationship.

What this means in practical terms is that the paper I'm doing for the DPR conference at the beginning of April suddenly seems do-able, although is miles off what the abstract said it would be. Hey ho.

Becoming a PhD student

I've been on a workshop! And I, yes the person who is still amazed she can switch a computer on and never learned how to work a video recorder (remember those?), have now made a series of short 'movies'. I have taken Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads' as my inspiration as I am obviously a Puritan at heart. I assure you, it was an aesthetic and methodological decision and not just coz I am rubbish at technology. In fact I have rather taken to this moviemaking malarky.

During the workshop we were asked to reflect on the critical incidents that have peppered our research journey, our becoming a PhD student. I also used it as an opportunity to do something for the blog. And it has certainly given me much food for thought on what I am prepared to reveal as well as raising certain ethical issues (of which more later). In short it dovetailed with all the issues I was hoping to work with by having a blog in the first place.

This is the first clip and I talk about how my journey began.

Tuning in to the zeitgeist or blissful ignorance?

My supervisor sent me a paper the other day (Jones, K The Qualitative Report Volume 9 Number 1 March 2004 95-112 http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR9-1/jones.pdf Mission Drift in Qualitative Research, or Moving Toward a Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies, Moving Back to a More Systematic Narrative Review - which I think it also strayed into how to interpret and analyse too). What follows is an edited version of an email I sent to her about it (done with her permission of course).

I included some of the methods touched on in the paper even in my initial research design (this makes what I did sound quite grand) eg going back to participants with issues and questions that other participants brought up. So although they have never met eachother participants have in fact talked to eachother. Likewise, I also set up conversations between participants and 'the literature' by asking their opinions on specific theories and analyses, particularly around class, and got their takes on those. I am also a great one for'grey literature' (that is stuff that is not written with scholarly intention but from which a great deal can be learned - in my case I look at Aimhigher websites a good deal)).

I'm never sure whether to be glad or disheartened when I read that there are actual labels that can be attached to these methods. Have I had my finger on the pulse of the academic zeitgeist when I come up with these ideas myself? Or have I simply failed to do enough reading? Is this kind of labelling of methods a more fruitful academic enterprise than simply doing and describing what you have done? Is it a useful shorthand? Or is it a throwback to, a remnant of, positivism? In the end I justify my approach by way of the term 'compelling methodology' which is very grand because sometimes my justifications are very practical ones. It was hard enough for example for participants to find space in their lives to see me - trying to get nine of us together at the same time would have proabably been impossible. And sometimes they are fundamental to my approach - it is the person's story that is the beating heart of the analysis - not their view on any particular issue. And so sometimes my decisions are both practical and central to my research philosophy.

So thanks for this - in the end I think the old adage of having the courage of your convictions is probably a useful one.

I went on a course last week which has led to my making 3 short video 'movies' about my research journey. I am hoping to put these on the blog next week.

Privates on Parade

I've been ruminating quite a bit on the notions of 'public' and 'private' since my last post, particularly as I am writing a paper to present at a conference (DPR8 'Power and the Academy' Manchester 6-8 April http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/dpr/). My paper asks 'what is needed if we are to re-imagine the academy?' and assumes the desirability of public spaces in which new knowledge is produced. However, what I did not appreciate when submitting my abstact was just how complex the notion of 'public' has become. Digital technologies have both expanded and fragmented meanings of 'public' so we live in an age of a 'global public' and also of 'intimate publics' (to borrow Lauren Berlant's term). This has added a whole new layer to my thinking on 'what's in a name'. It's also why I picked the title of this post (originally of a stage play and film - a satire not a 'romp') because it too has many layers of meaning (beyond the more obvious double entendre), and epitomises the situatedness of those meanings. How would such a title have been read, for example, in the 1940s? Or by someone whose first language wasn't English? Or for whom the term 'Carry On....' is incomplete? But what I found particularly pertinent was the allusion to what is revealed/revealable and when and where and by whom. Is the notion of global/intimate the same as public/private or does the former override the latter? And where does secrecy come into it? I have always had problems with 'secrecy' but had largely managed to resolve these by putting a clear conceptual boundary between 'secrecy' and 'privacy'. So with reference to my names I have no desire to keep them secret but I do want to keep them private (and in part this means I reveal them when, where and to whom I decide). However, the shifting lines between public and private are impacting on a distinction that has long served me well and I am being harried out of my comfort zone. No bad thing.

What's in a name?

When I was doing the MA in Educational Research at Sheffield (yes another one - the Women's Studies one was not recent enough to count as prep for doing a PhD - luckily because the MA Ed Res was a total joy from beginning to end and managed to turn me into a halfway decent researcher) we had a session on de-colonising research. Dr Jennifer Lavia started the session by asking us to think about our names. And I've been thinking ever since. You see I used to be known as Yvonne Jovanka Hermine Novakovic. But since getting married in 2005 I am Yvonne Downs. Being adamant that I am a feminist, changing my name and 'taking' my husband's name was no small matter. There was a reason I felt I wanted to, but to be honest I wasn't really sure what that reason was. I just knew I wanted to change my name.

Likewise, chosing not to be public about my middle names was motivated by something I was not able articulate. My son Jonah asked me recently if I didn't like them (no, I love them) or was embarrased by them (he's 17 and so is easily embarrassed. I'm 50 and my threshold is somewhat higher). I haven't lost or dropped my middle names - I just no longer have them on official documents (although they crop up now and again for example on my 'O' level certificates). After Dr Lavia's seminar I was able to think more deeply about what's in a name and had reached an understanding of my motivations but it wasn't until last week that I finally articulated them.

Talking to one of my participants (we often stray beyond the boundaries set by the research topic) I told her that I became tired of having to enter into a conversation every time I gave my names. This was more than simply having to spell them every time, tedious as that was. No, what got to me was having to reveal aspects of myself in answer to the questions they prompted. 'Novakovic? Where is that from? From my dad. It's Serbian. (At one time to say Serbian was akin to saying 'from the devil himself', such was the demonisation of Serbs in the media 'reporting' on wars where there always have to be good guys and bad guys). No, not from Serbia. From Croatia. (How come? Oh God which century to start in?). And Hermine? My mum's name. No she wasn't English. Austrian. Why was she in England? (How far back do I go, what details will satisfy, what assumpions are you making, how much do you understand, when will this ever end?). Am I English? (I often felt sorely tempted to answer this in full, but then just gave the yes that made life so much easier). And on and on and on. (Why didn't I just say mind your own business? Well sometimes, often, I needed these people to do things for me and why antagonise them? And they meant no harm - curiosity is not a crime and anyway, I was brought up to be polite).

This is just to give a flavour of what answering the question 'what is your name' could occasion. As Dr Lavia pointed out - a name says not only much about you, it says much about your history and the context in which you are you. It is a densely packed case. And now, more than the relief of no longer having to 'disclose' parts of my 'self' to strangers in settings incongruous with intimacy, I no longer have to implicate others (my parents particularly) in the formation of that self. In answering questions about my name I was simultaneously saying too little and too much. So I have restored those aspects of me which I wish to keep private to a private sphere, problematic as the notion of a private sphere may be. It irks me sometimes that no one questions Yvonne Downs because it says much about the workings of power, which was kind of where Dr Lavia went in her seminar (but in a far more nuanced and sophisticated and critcally astute way - I don't wish to do her an injustice). But most of the time I hug to my chest the knowledge that in saying my name I am not giving myself.