Panel: Being and becoming an international research network to contribute to policy change: finding and strengthening our voices/our selves Women’s Worlds, 7 July 2011 Network research coordination over time and space: reflections on the intricacies of international collaboration [My summary: The focus I'm taking is looking at what is involved in the formation, sustainability and sustaining nature of a research network such as ours, based on what I've seen and experienced with GRACE over the past 6 years. I am reflecting on my own ways of working in our shared context.] Anne Webb Introduction As the GRACE research coordinator for the past 6 years, since the start of the project, I’ve realized and experienced that a sustained, vibrant research network involves many different characteristics that may not at first come to mind. It is built on trust, compassion, honesty, integrity, consistency, sensitivity, as well as a shared commitment to and expertise in the particular reasons for and function of the network. There also has to be room for different perspectives and disagreements. As a member of the project staff, my experience and role is clearly different from that of my co-panellists here, who are all leading research projects. In this presentation I describe my role, how I work as the research coordinator, and how I see this way of working contributing to what we have been achieving as a network. My hope is these descriptions of and reflections on my experience will be useful to the strength and resiliency of other international research networks. To understand my role, I’ll first give a brief description to give you a picture of how our project is organized. In the project staff there are two of us who work closely with the researchers – Ineke, who is the project leader and research director, is presenting by way of a video recording as she couldn’t be here. In addition to providing overall coordination of the project aspect of GRACE, my role as the research coordinator involves engaging with each researcher and each research team throughout their research process, from the point at which they have focussed their research question, to the final research report writing and chapter writing, as we bring pivotal aspects of our research findings and process analysis into book form. Communication with the research teams – and in the first phase there were 14 teams in 12 countries, and now we are 22 teams in 15 countries – is primarily by email. In some cases there is more than one research team in the same city or country, but for the most part we
are all dispersed and rely on ICTs to connect. I am in regular contact with each team by email, and we also have e-lists, one for each of the two regions (Africa, and the North Africa Middle East), and one that includes everyone. The main list, we call it the metalist, is used increasingly and for conversations shared by or relevant to many members, including methodology information and discussions, and substantial contemplations on the way that we work as researchers. We also share resources this way, such as links to articles and organizations, relevant media coverage of issues, links to presentations and video clips that can be viewed on-line, conference calls for proposals, our project specific information, and so forth. An analysis of the activity and role of these lists would be a study in itself. We sometimes communicate by Skype, on-line chat or phone. We have been meeting once a year, for methodology and writing workshops, in each of the two regions. These events are usually about 2 weeks long. Not everyone can be funded to participate in workshops, so there are a number of researchers I have never met in person. We work together intensively for long days, eat together, go on outings together, exercise, dance together, share about our selves, our visions, our lives, and our work. This is my main exposure to each person’s personality, and theirs to mine, and for gaining a sense of their context. I do a lot of listening and absorbing during these times that we come together. I ask questions in order to better understand and get to know each researcher and her or his work. These sorts of connections are not readily made through electronic communications. During these workshops we develop rapport with each other. This is crucial as in the months between each workshop I correspond regularly with every one regarding their research progress, questioning and providing suggestions on their research process, their presentation and interpretation of their findings, their analysis, relevant literature to read, their chapter focus, their identification of the crux of their chapter, and their development of this in their writing. A certain level of knowing and trusting each other is essential, I find, for these long-distance communications to be written and received constructively, recognizing each researcher’s nature, way of working, and context, to the degree possible. As I often challenge the Gracious researchers to unpack, or deconstruct their thinking further, we need a level of trust and mutual respect to allow this type of engagement. Fortunately I started my work with the Network by joining the first training workshop. So the importance of spending time together, even a relatively short period, was evident to me immediately when I began my work with GRACE. Those who have not participated in the workshop started out as names to me and I didn’t have much sense of what they were like. I have gradually, to varying degrees, developed a sense of connection with those researchers who I did not yet meet. I find our communications tend to be more formal as we haven’t had the opportunity to become familiar with each other’s personality.
How I work and why I work this way Often when I read messages or writing submitted by the researchers I know, I read it hearing their voice and intonation. I know who I am connecting with as I think about what they say and work on composing my response to them. Maybe it seems it shouldn’t matter how well I know the researchers when I am working with their thinking and writing, as I can work with the text that is in front of me. But in that approach one misses much. And in our work of qualitative gender research for social change, the work of each researcher is rooted in her or his heart, immediate context, and vision and theory for how change happens and what is possible. As I don’t know their specific contexts (as Ineke made the site visits during the research process), I am already needing to draw on all aspects that I do know to closely connect with the thinking processes, values, experiences and all the other aspects of their reality that contributes to their processes, perceptions, interpretations and analysis of their research data. This close, perhaps intimate connection with each researcher’s voice and sense of who they are requires time, but also sensitivity and self-awareness on my own part. It requires that I be very self-conscious of my own assumptions, interpretations, listening to and reflecting on my questioning in order to stay on track with each researcher’s research purpose to the point where their and my own values become free of the layers of interpretation that we wrap them in. So it is fortunate and necessary that I have spent time with each lead researcher whom I work with. And my sense is that this is mutual. The researchers need to know something about my nature in order to receive and read my input and questions with my tone, manner and voice in mind. She or he needs to trust that the comments they receive are sent with the best of intentions, are intended to enhance and further their existing strengths and insights, and with a commitment to the excellence of our shared project. Thus our annual workshops are intensive training periods, but they are also much more than this. For the network is more than a group of individual researchers connected by the project team/staff. The result of my close and intensive readings can be requests for substantial revisions and/or extensive further reading, contemplation and analysis. Sometimes researchers need to go back to their respondents to take their research process further. While I may be questioned on various points and meanings, the researcher sends another version a few weeks later, thoroughly taking my comments into account. To my mind there are a number of reasons for this. One is the trust and rapport that underlies our collaboration. In the process of questioning – whether the questions come from me, or Ineke, or the researcher herself – the rationale for the way that we approach and conduct our research is brought to the surface. What becomes tangible is the depth of analysis and critical thinking that brings crucial insights to light when GRACE researchers thoroughly investigate their own interpretations, assumptions, values, contextualized thinking,
unpacking all aspects of their research and their relationship with that research, to see and understand the meanings below the surface, what they mean, and how such discoveries and awareness can contribute to changing the inequities of the lived realities of those involved in their research, including themselves. I find that taking the approach of asking questions, sometimes questions that seek further reflection on the researcher’s own understandings and interpretations of her findings , or sometimes many specific questions, I find that it is a very constructive process. This process, this dialogue between researcher and research coordinator, is strengthen by, and requires, trust in each other’s authenticity, compassion, respect, and transparency, in my experience. It is an intensive, demanding process, even and perhaps especially when engaged across oceans, contexts, cultures, languages and via written communications only. Connected to this is the value, and I think scarcity, of in-depth constructive feedback on one’s research and writing. Part of the element of trust, is that the researchers know that they will receive encouragement when they write to me. This is part of how I see my role in this network. I try to provide a sense of connection, support, encouragement as well as the in-depth analysis of their work. It is not easy to share one’s work, especially when it is a creation rooted in one’s passionate belief in contributing to change. When working so far apart, how to contribute to sustaining the energy and focus each person has for what they are doing, comes into the equation…………and this part is actually mutual. For, while it is my job to be the research coordinator for GRACE, I also need to sustain my energy and focus. Working like this, depending on communicating by writing, can become very isolating. The bulk of the time I am sitting alone with my computer in my home office. There is minimal small talk, no dynamic discussions (except on line), outings with colleagues after work, or other forms collegial activity that can be part of working with a likeminded group. I don’t know much about the families and day to day lives of my network colleagues. When they do not reply to a message for some time I don’t know if they are ill, injured in recent uprisings, upset with me for my comments, or if their computer crashed. Or maybe they are taking a few days off and enjoying a holiday! [………..what do I need to sustain my focus and energy?]
Our in-common commitment to gender equality, research for social change, and passionate belief that a better world is possible and that we are going to contribute to transforming this belief into reality, in any way that we can, in our own contexts and beyond, contributes to sustaining my energy and focus. Seeing what this individual and personal change means/how this looks in the researchers’ research, and where the researchers can go with what they see and learn, through their contemplation, and our dialogues, also reinforces my sense of the validity of in-depth participatory research, as
an action that makes a difference to overall efforts designed to contribute to/bring about social change.
Another aspect is that I have the benefit of accompanying the researchers through a process of identifying and peeling away layers of assumptions and interpretations held by their respondents or themselves, which also helps me peel away my own assumptions and recognize my blind spots. What is highly valuable to me is that through the processes engaged by the researchers, and our e-dialogues, all of our minds keep opening up to different understandings that counter status-quo, discriminatory thinking. (and then, what difference does it make – so what? This is illustrated by the presentations of Oum Kalthoum, Arwa and Gisele)