Round the NiTiM Summer School: Reflections on Academic Treasure Hunting
** I wrote this as part of my reflections from the Summer School in Bergamo organized by NITIM Graduate School Network, which I attended on 25-28 June 2014. It also provides a context of my learnings in ISCRAM Asia in Colombo, attended last 18-21 June 2014.
The PhD journey for me, so far, has literally and figuratively meant lodging around with my backpack, readings, research diary, and a heart full of courage. Months before the NiTiM Summer School, I was gearing up for three (of the many) events that are crucial to my PhD journey: my proposal defense in Barcelona, a paper presentation in ISCRAM Asia in Colombo, and a presentation of my research proposal in Bergamo. I mention this because it contextualizes the environment in which I have seen myself grow over the past months as a PhD Fellow. Moreover, it helps me frame my activities as essential and logical parts of a wider picture. As a PhD fellow, I find myself oftentimes muddled in a sea of overwhelming literature, pitch for ideas from different people, duties, and activities – and a way to calm myself down is to take a step back and see where the dots connect.
The first dot begins in Barcelona.
Over the course of 10 months, I had been bouncing back and forth on literature reviews and brainstorming – with my supervisor, other PhD fellows, and some industry practitioners – as I try to firm up a research agenda on disaster management. The short term target is pragmatic: to defend my research proposal to a formal jury in Barcelona so I can begin working on something more tangible; while the long term target is more romantic: contribute something relevant and useful to the society. To achieve both, discipline, introspection, and openness are crucial. In Barcelona, I tried my best to exercise all three profusely. All the months leading to my defense date, I made concrete targets of article reading and annotation per day, requested for weekly brainstorming sessions with my supervisor, wrote and rewrote versions of my PhD proposal, which to this date is tagged as “work-in-progress”. It was both mechanical and spontaneous – the daily repetition of a routine helped me a great deal to progress with my work, but at the same time, the ideas that I stumble upon from different sources also allowed me to have a collection of artefacts that may or may not be necessary for my PhD. At that point, I realized that the journey was akin to treasure-hunting – and treasure hunting required wide and deep scoping. Defending my PhD proposal was like justifying that the tiny artefacts I have found along the way may be actual treasures – and the only way to find out was to conduct deeper assessments.
And when I presented my case and subjected it to questions from the jury in Barcelona, I was relieved to know that the jury found my case substantiated enough to conduct deeper assessments. There were points to improve, as this work is in a natural state of constant evolution, but I was allowed to move forward with the research.
So the second dot continues in Colombo, Sri Lanka for the ISCRAM Asia conference. My field is on crisis management, and it was imperative for me to congregate with people who are working on the same field. ISCRAM Asia is a smaller group of scholars and practitioners that come together with a geographical focus on Asia. I had opted for this for the simple reason that I wanted to bridge the knowledge I had accumulated so far in Europe to a geographical area that not only is so close to home, but also has practical experience in disasters. Going there revalidated a sense of relevance for me because it was in itself an opportunity to position myself as a scholar. They timed the conference with the 10th anniversary in memoriam of the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. Discussions among scientists, policymakers, activists and practitioners abounded about the learnings from then and now. Almost all of them spoke in unison that the present-day Asia is now equipped with better science and technology to weather disasters better. Yet they also continued to mull whether such progress in science and technology is at par with the existing institutional structures of the society. On the one hand, scientists and engineers are rallying their contribution to help countries become adaptive to disaster situations; while on the other hand, some scholars are calling for a critical assessment of institutional structures, as these should complement the resources that science and technology are continuously and graciously offering. The discourse is rich, but also suffers the risk of potentially being dichotomous. Except for when it was my turn to present my paper, I resolved to being a spectator, asking only questions where I saw appropriate, fearing that the more I say, the more I can fall into a novice’s trap of dichotomizing the discourse. I was, after all, a novice researcher myself. I felt that I took more than I could give during that conference, I left with a full heart and some notes and contacts in that familiar part of the world, determined to go back and make a concrete use of it for my dissertation. “I want my research to contribute to the discourse here,” I wrote in my research diary.
Before I was able to introspect on how I can turn that into a more actionable goal, I was already on the plane back to Europe, headed for my third dot: the NiTiM Summer School in Bergamo. Coming to Bergamo and getting together with the other PhD fellows was also a form of coming home – with me in Bergamo are fellow treasure hunters, and their coaches. When I came to Bergamo, I felt as though I was already carrying a bag full of potential treasures, and it was already starting to become too heavy to process. Especially when it got to my presentation, I received contending feedback on my work – there were those who supported it, there were those who did not. I was taking the feedback in their entirety and was afraid to miss out on anything. At the end, while I felt I had collected many potential treasures, I had come face to face with confusion on where to begin and what to do with those comments. Thus I took the opportunity to vocally express my thoughts about the matter. I mentioned to the panel that a PhD fellow can only cover a certain scope in research, and that there will be one main message emanating from that research, and that main message has to be pitched to multiple stakeholders. Having multiple stakeholders means subjecting your work to varying intellectual opinions, and in cases where these opinions are heterogeneous, how are PhD fellows supposed to pick sides? Are PhD fellows supposed to pick sides in the first place?
“You need to build your advisory council,” said one of the faculty members in my panel. I wrote this in heavy ink as it was perhaps one of the most powerful and useful advices that I took from the NiTiM Summer School. It is true that the biggest advantage of going to gatherings like this is the rich discussions one can solicit from different experts, but that could also be a disadvantage if not managed accordingly. I noted that as an early stage researcher, I had been fearful of missing out on treasures – thus I kept on collecting. But amassed treasure that cannot be used loses its value – and this summer school taught me to veer away from a more generalist, all-encompassing view. No matter where I position myself, there will always be someone spectating from the other side, and it is not necessarily to contend but to complement my work. I can only go one step at a time, and that requires knowledge, and a good advisory team who can coach me how to not falter.
And so I am now back in Barcelona, in a period of grounding, recuperating, introspecting, and strategizing on building an alliance for my research.
Acknowledging that part of the journey is deciding which road to take and not take, I am less scared and more confident to keep going now. The treasures will be found. #
