What does doctoral research look like?

Next Tuesday (6 June), I will spend the day Exploring Visual Methods as a Developing Field, as part of an ESRC summer school taking place at Edinburgh University. Ahead of the event, which will be delivered by Professor Kate Wall from University of Strathclyde’s School of Education, participants have been asked to take 15 photographs which represent what we think it means to be a Doctoral student in 2017. From that we need to select a sub-set of 5 photos that best address the enquiry. Here is what I will be taking to the session:

This photograph is intended to reflect how my research depends on both physical and online spaces and communities. My 'network' is made up of colleagues on campus who are also part of a larger dispersed group of researchers and lecturers, many of whom I have never ‘met’ beyond our exchanges in Twitter and in other digital settings. At the same time I am as likely to be talking about my research online, as on-campus.

 Something I really value about being a PhD student is having the flexibility to choose and move between different spaces that I think will support to the task I am working on at a particular time. The Psychology building on George Square is a good space to spend an hour of interrupted writing. Others locations on campus (and beyond) are better for reading, others for conversation, and so on. I usually begin each day with a plan of where I will work, depending on what I need to achieve. Edinburgh is full of pleasant and inspiring place to work. I'm lucky.

This is my PhD supervisor, Sian Bayne, on a billboard outside Old College. There are a few of these posters dotted around campus and more than once they have reminded me that I owe Sian a piece of writing. Subliminal supervision. I have included this picture to represent how the expectations and direction set out by Sian and my second supervisor, Jen Ross, guide my research. If some of the other photographs here point towards the independence that comes with being a PhD student, it is accompanied by guidance and the encouragement to work to a high standard. 

This external hard drive represents the data I have collected over the last year whilst carrying out ethnographic field work. It contains thousands of photographs, hundreds of sound recordings and quite a lot of words. Most recently I've been adding lengthy interview recordings which had been exhausting my laptop. This image sheds light on the subject of my research, but also talks about the way that so much of my work is captured and condensed into ones and zeroes. 

My doctoral research takes place alongside other interests, activities and responsibilities. Before taking this picture I had been checking e-mail whilst my son had his breakfast. We were listening to music and talking about how long it would take to walk to the moon. After that it’s a rush to get out of the house before 7.45am. It felt important to include a photo which made the point that doing a PhD is never just doing a PhD. The possibility of attending evening seminars, travelling to conferences, taking advantage of study exchanges and other opportunities always depends on more than whether these activities match my research interests or if they justify the cost or time (and I'm not suggesting this is unique to me, of course). 

Here are the other images, meanwhile:

Returning to the instructions for this exercise, we have been asked to print out the photos in order that they can be shared as part of a group exercise: it will be interesting to see how my own experiences of doctoral research sit along those of a wider group. Fascinating exercise, not least as I've been using image elicitation in my own research. Looking forward to it.

See also:
Digital sociomaterial journaling
Looking beyond photos: the architectural site visit
​The visual, multimodal History classroom