reflections

I have been having some time out of my studies for health and financial reasons and have been concentrating on work and family life for a while. My project is still very much there in my consciousness but I feel I have lost a bit of momentum which i feel is especially hard when you're doing it part-time over a number of years. It feels as though the end is never quite in sight!

I'm about to recommence again and it will be straight in to the practicalities of recruiting participants and hopefully before too long, data collection. I'm looking forward to it but at the same time it's quite daunting. I feel quite at home with the theory and with my research design by now and feel comfortable talking about it but I also need to find time to write about it all and work on the early chapters and keep on top of current research in the area - time management will be one of the main challenges this next year. I don't envisage there being any big learning curves in terms of intellectual development in the immediate future as I'll be focused on the practical side of research. But who knows - I could be wrong... what I'm really hoping for is that my carefully constructed resaerch framework will be challenged in the process of data collection - that things will pop up which I haven't thought of. It is always an exciting process as it moves away from theory for a while and comes to life. I expect it to be the process which follows, when I analyse the data, when patterns begin to emerge and the research gains its own momentum, is conceptualised and reworked into new knowledge that I will be able to say I have made a leap in terms of understanding - to me, that is what the research process is all about and especially with an inductive model - discovery and new insights and entering into a dialogue with others working in the field.

I think my main learning curve to date has been the process of deeply understanding how the research process works. While I had learned it before, I realise I had not deeply understood it. And what I had not fully understood was the need to fully integrate the theory, rationale and methodology with a research paradigm supporting the whole. That the rationale flows from the literature review with theory to support and frame and that what you are going to research is intrinsically related to how you are going to go about it, with methods being carefully selected in order to best answer the question and supported by an engagement with methodology. To me this is what makes research valid and ethically justifiable. Research can be and is undertaken on many levels all the time - to ask questions, make enquiries, critique, evaluate and look for the answers is part of every day life and work. But the ability to construct valid questions based on existing knowledge and to select the appropriate approach to answer, examine and explore these questions in an ethical way in order to make a meaningful contribution to knowledge on which others can build needs a professional, skilled, focused, sensitive approach. Where the DPhil (and partly the Msc i attended as part of my training) has taken me further on (from the PG Cert in social resaerch and MA) is obtaining a better grasp of the philosophical underpinnings of research and a sense of it's history, where we are with research in terms of its history, current debates and of course how it works in practice and the questions and justifications required at every stage of the decicion making process. This understanding is what gives me the right to say that I am a researcher and to feel I'm entitled to that professional status rather than just being a student or doing a job and it's something that I feel passionate about.

This enhanced understanding has also helped me to be much more critical of others' research and much more aware of potential pitfalls. I always know when I've understood something when I can see a diagram in my head! I wonder if I come across as inflexible about what resarech is and how it's done but actually I just feel that my standards have gone up and I appreciate the significance and ethical implications of what you do when you conduct research and think there has to be some integrity about it - a valid piece of research is not random or vague or unsupported.

pause

I actually had such a block about recruiting and getting onto the fieldwork that I took a break - it all seemed too busy (and plus in my other life as a resaercher I'm immersed in recruitment and interviews - it all seemed a bit much). But it was the best thing I ever did! I've realised that I don't want to be too social sciency about the process - as a feminist resercher I need to make my own experience much more visible and central to the process and thesis. It's been a great experience to reflect on my own story and what it means and I think I needed to take the time to do that. It may seem indulgent but I have a secure methodological backing for this work and also it's a personal necessity - I'm remembering why I set out to do this in the first place and it is as much a personal as an intellectual journey. It also seems very important to tap into my creative side - this is not an objective, scientific, detached piece of research. For me, to express the personal explicitly in the work makes it more valid, more engaged and more honest - though of course any account will be a construction of reality. But in standpoint theory, without the lived experience of whoever is in a specific marginalised position, the knowledge becomes distorted. When else am I going to have this opportunity in my career as a researcher? Finally I feel as though I'm taking control, making it my own and remembering why I embarked on this project in the first place. And it certainly wasn't to conform to any preconceived rules. That's better!

Doctoral Learning Journey so far

Well I'm now at the beginning of my second year and the research fieldwork phase of my doctorate, although as I'm studying part-time it has been a long time coming...

The first year was great - trying out lots of ideas, reading, meeting people, attending conferences - it all felt a bit indulgent in a way and not too challenging. However, as I drew towards funding applications and the resarch outline, it started to become more problematic. I enjoyed solving epistemological challenges - how to reconcile feminist standpoint theory with post modern feminist perspectives - but as soon as one problem was solved another came up and it all started to feel overwhlming as I realised how little I knew and was drawn into revisiting the big questions, questioning who I am as a researcher. This all seemed to trigger a crisis in confidence and I also found that trying to mould what I wanted to do to what was deemed valid in funding terms was quite disheartening.

My research is looking at intimacy in the life trajectories of lone mothers and it has a huge significance to me personally - it has emerged as much from the conversations I've engaged in with friends as feminist theories / theories of intimacy and the family I've looked at and I'm aiming to keep it very focussed and grounded in experience. The aim is to uncover and explore experiences which have previously been marginalised. The underlying questions are about choice and contraint - structural / cultural / personal factors which impact on lone mothers' choice making and negotiations in the personal realm of their lives.

It only really came together at the end of last year when I did my research outline presentation. This forced me to put my resarch into more accessible terms in order to communicate what I was doing and in the process, somehow it became clearer to me and i could see the shape of it. Filling out the various forms for research outline approval also enabled me to simplify what I was doing and put it into a few succinct sentences - it then seemed clear, rather than a sprawling unmanageable mass of ideas, thoughts and experiences.

And now I'm taking time to reflect, write about my own experiences, develop my framework and gradually begin to recruit - the practicalities of recruiting participants is set to be a major challenge for this year...