Collaborative research
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Workshop to provide insight on how to engage in collaborative research, and strategies to develop capacity for collaboration on the part of researchers
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Collaborative research
- 1. Collaboration in research Dr Peter Kahn Centre for Lifelong Learning University of Liverpool
- 2. The growth of collaboration as see through the Science Citation Index, from Katz and Hicks (1995)
- 3. • Tackling Campylobacter in the food chain Collaboration with Defra and the FSA to study Campylobacter in the food chain
- 4. A trans-disciplinary research programme funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
- 5. The European Research and Education Collaboration with Asia (EURECA) project – Facebook Group
- 6. Paul Erdős
- 7. What is collaboration? • … two or more parties from potentially disparate settings working together to achieve a common (academic) goal – (adapted from Walsh and Kahn, 2009)
- 8. Context • Research involves work at the boundaries of what is possible. – Troublesome activity; Emergent working • Technology/mobility facilitates and drives collaborative research • Embedding within a global research system – Research foci crossing boundaries, policy and funding frameworks, social infrastructure
- 9. Impact • Does the impact of research depend on collaboration? • How might greater capacity for collaborative working benefit your career?
- 10. Role profile - Research Grade 9 • Lead and develop external networks for example with other active researchers and leading thinkers in the field. • Develop links with external contacts such as other educational and research bodies, employers, professional bodies and other providers of funding and research initiatives to foster collaboration and generate income. • Lead teams within areas of responsibility. • Ensure that teams within the department work together. • Act to resolve conflicts within and between teams.
- 11. A model for collaborative research, from Walsh and Kahn (2009)
- 12. Collaborative vehicles • The underlying social basis for working together – manifested through formal organisation, clear agreements, agreed roles, shared practices, regular patterns of meeting, events, relationships. • Other infrastructure to support collaborative research – Technology, equipment, ...
- 13. A need for dialogue • Collaboration often involve working across differences in expertise, knowledge, culture, ... – dialogue can ensure cohesion, trust, mutual understanding and so on. • Our context suggests that a premium is placed on understanding: – dialogue provides a basis for understanding and new insights.
- 14. Personal engagement • Underlying concerns – maximising performance, social ideals, communication? • A role can catalyse engagement – offering contact between social structure and agency • Capacity for joint action - McIntyre and Dweck • Securing insight – reflexivity, attention and dialogue
- 15. Exercise 1 • Stories from prior experiences of working collaboratively where persistence was required, discussion resulted in insight, or existing infrastructure made the difference?
- 16. Exercise 2: engagement • In pairs, introduce your research interests to each other. Can you identify any common interests in areas you are currently trying to progress?
- 17. Exercise 3 • In pairs, can you identify any ways to strengthen the articulation between your research and your own concerns? What is it that matters to you? In what ways does this relate to your research?
- 18. (Exercise 4) • In pairs, consider what skills/expertise you possess that could be used to support collaborative research? How can you capitalise on this expertise?
- 19. Exercise 5: dialogue • How can you further integrate discussion or exchanges with others as an integral element of your (collaborative) research? – Discussion with someone who has a perspective or skill-set that would benefit your research?
- 20. Exercise 6: infrastructure • Can you identify any infrastructure of which you could take greater advantage? – Social: meetings (research seminars), relationships (other forms of support), events, funding, roles (looking after a machine), professional networks, … – Technology (software that you could start using, web 2.0, …)
- 21. Taking it forward • Identify any actions that you can take as a result of attending this session. • Or are there any key insights that you will take away from the session?
- 22. References • Katz, J. and Hicks, D. (1995) ‘Questions of collaboration’, Nature 375, 99. • Walsh L and Kahn P (2009) Collaborative working in higher education, Routledge, London.
Notas do Editor
- I wanted to start with a series of images. I will comment on each of them, without giving you a fuller context until afterwards.How many of you work in inter-disciplinary settings? How many of you have to work alongside others than just your supervisor? I hope it will be interesting and insightful, rather than so much a set of things for you to go away and do.
- Inter-agency working as a standard feature of research life.
- Diasporas, Migration and Identities is a trans- disciplinary research programme funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It includes arts and humanities scholars from all over the UK working on individual research, large collaborative and interdisciplinary projects, and in international networks. The aim is to research, discuss and present issues related to diasporas and migration, and their past and present impact on subjectivity and identity, culture and the imagination, place and space, emotion, politics and sociality.
- Picked off from Facebook at random
- Or take the personal collaborations forged by Paul Erdős, the Hungarian mathematician who wrote 1,500 journal papers with the help of 511 different collaborators. I don’t know if anyone knows their Erdos number here?
- How might working with others from potentially disparate settings help you progress? Provide examples of collaboration from the floor?How many of you would say that you are actually engaged in collaborative research with others? Beyond your supervisor?This makes a difference to actually working with others, and to conducting research.Two key issues here – how much is joint decision making involved? (Matthew Taylor – coming from a Government perspective, and recognising the egalitarian edge to our initial material for the book).The context of higher education – working at the boundaries of knowledge also colours for us what is going on here. Plenary discussion – how many of you are actively involved in collaborative research? Can we have a few examples of where you are collaborating with colleagues or others in support of your research, as wide as you like.
- For your PhD - What sorts of complexity are you grappling with in your research? To what extent are you able to tackle these on your own? In the short term it might not seem that it matters that much – you need to secure a Phd. But breakthroughs in the longer term often depend on this working with others. A mathematician Andrew Wiles might go off and bury himself in an attic – but even he needed to work with others.Your own examples in each case!! (Although final one is a little more remote.) Provide examples from the policy environment (we’ll come onto citation analysis and impact of research shortly.Commercialisation also drives collaboration with industryPlanning may take on a greater role in scientific research, but some elements of planning ahead will be needed in almost all fields.
- We are now looking wider than research to other elements. Impact on society, the economy, your field, ... Why does it matter? Impact on others depends on Are you aware of any research projects with significant impact? Wheat rust project funded by the Gates Foundation. What is the most successful project you are aware of in your department? With the highest profile?Your career – how important is establishing a reputation or specialist expertise affect this? In some ways this can come later, but they need not be. Other people will not stand up for you unless they know a good deal about you, and where better than from working together. A more senior Professor who you have worked together with stands up for you, or so do others. Someone to speak for you. Opportunities – to point out to you.
- I’m regarding this as an ‘image’ – rather than for detailed reading, with leadership of colleagues also envisaged within this role profile.
- We’ll spend some initial time discussing this together, but do some more detailed work in small groups and pairs.
- Advantages exist to using existing infrastructure. You need to pay attention to these underlying elements if you are to make collaborative research work well. If you have no roles in a collaboration, no regular pattern of meeting or you don’t really know the person you are working with. If you make an agreement, that can make a difference.Get them to provide examples – any uses of technology to support your work together – data sharing; personal contacts. Any Facebook groups? Twitter accounts? Use of smart-phone Apps? Interdisiplinary working – any agreed protocols? As with your supervisor! Research seminars in the research group? Joint attendance at conferences? Examples required – at different levels of complexity, whether research group or just a coffee time. Tell a story on social structure – PGCert; what are the social structures on which you can hang your work and ideas? HEA project – building on existing meetings within the context of the leaders of PGCerts, and relationships developed through other professional contexts – SEDA, and others.
- What is a dialogue – an exchange of views about some element of the work in common or the process by which that work is completed or coordinated. ng. What are the concerns of others who are different to you? How will you learn to understand what matters to them? What opportunities do you have for this? Tell a story – Gordon Roberts (emergence). Complexity demands time, care and understanding. Understanding emerges from dialogue.Jason Davies – understanding across boundaries requires dialogue if it is to emerge.
- A need still for personal expertise and reputation – who you are does still matter. But in the longer term collaboration matters a good deal.My current job opportunity – Associate Professorship at a nearby institution; more money, more status; but I’ve just turned down the opportunity. I’m currently involved in a project to develop the research environment at the University of Liverpool, as part of a major strategic drive to move up a gear as an institution – like Manchester 2015. Examples: Recent experience of collaboration on a funded project. HEA project. Persistence required in finding a way to communicate with a colleague at a distance for whom producing drafts or comments on drafts is challenging.
- Looking back at past experiences of collaboration in small groups. Or would you highlight something else that made a huge difference in your capacity to work with others?
- Understanding what might engage someone else – they need to be fired up.
- This might be easier in some applied disciplines, but even in pure contexts – mathematics or theoretical physics.
- This assumes that you have some responsibility for helping to shape it. Taking time to talk to others about the research – but when? Is there anything that you can exchange with someone else? What can you swop? In relation to a specific area that is important to you or that you need to address. You need to do the thinking here.If research is not collaborative then this is harder. If you are not working together on someone then the occasions for this are fewer.Where do you have time to make these exchanges? Setting up equipment – asking about other points? Helping someone else with their work – provides an excuse for you to raise an issue that you have been thinking about, as the other person might well be willing to take some extra time. Any other ideas. Social activity alongside the research, or occasioned by it. Greetings and goodbyes. Lunchtime chats.How do you just not sit in your room and write your thesis?Emergent working – tolerance for this.
- In order to progress an area that is challenging or that matters to you. Take this one in plenary? How would you go about finding out about things here?