Mutually Intelligible? – Getting involved in Opposites Attract

By Linda Baines and Paul Kelly

This post reflect the experience of two researchers’ involvement in Opposites Attract – how they came participate in Opposites Attract, what they feel they brought to it, their experience of being involved and plans for any next steps. The text incorporates both Paul and Linda’s words.

The Researchers
Paul Kelly is currently based in Southampton Education School, carrying out ESRC-funded doctoral research on the marketisation of universities in the context of recent policy developments in Higher Education. His thesis explores the use of inter-explicative methods in case study research, focusing specifically on the relationship between social sciences and the humanities. He has previously worked as a lecturer in the Centre for Language Study at Southampton.

Linda Baines worked for a long time for a research council in a variety of senior management roles. She completed her PhD (“Exploring Responsible Knowledge Exchange”) at Southampton Business School in February 2016. Her doctoral research explores interconnections between knowledge exchange (a role which universities and PSREs have assumed alongside research and teaching), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and ethics.

Research Interests
Paul’s research interests include Higher Education policy; sociology of education; philosophy and contemporary European literature; theories of the subject; critical discourse analysis.

Linda’s research interests are in higher education, knowledge exchange/knowledge transfer, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), ethics, values; higher education; enterprise; innovation; impact; evaluation; institutional theory/logic, social enterprise; third sector; sharing economy and anything else she is curious about.

Why get involved?
They got involved in Opposites Attract for different reasons. Paul wanted to meet researchers from a range of faculties and participate in the cultural and intellectual life of the University. Linda wanted to gain experience in interdisciplinary research by collaborating with someone from a different discipline/faculty, and to explore new topics and areas.

Paul decided to participate in the Opposites Attract programme by responding to a Doctoral College invitation to carry out inter-disciplinary research. Linda had read about the Festival of Doctoral Research and she saw the Opposites Attract initiative. She was intrigued by the idea of being paired with someone who had different research interests and starting point.

Paul and Linda had different expectations: Paul wanted to connect the discourse of multi-disciplinarity with the practice of developing a research project across disciplines. Linda wanted to see research from a new perspective, to broaden her horizons and interests and to experience undertaking interdisciplinary research.

Common Ground
Through talking and comparing notes, Paul and Linda were able to find common ground. For Paul, the characteristics of academic capitalism appear to be similarly identifiable from distinct disciplinary perspectives. Linda felt that although they have different research interests, they have discovered that they have “marketistion” of higher education in common.

Paul and Linda both wanted to explore and experience the possibility and potential of collaborating in interdisciplinary research. As they come from different disciplines and research philosophical standpoints, they found that they needed to learn to translate each other’s “language” so that they could understand each other. Paul feels that they achieved this by generating a common discourse on the democratic imagination of a higher education multitude, so that possibilities for further research could be developed. Linda feels that finding common ground and a common language is proving to be an interesting experience, understanding each other’s terminology and language. They also realised that they had complementary strengths and skills which they each bring to the collaboration.

For Paul the processes of making a short film, agreeing on coding practices and contributing to blog posts has brought together a range of approaches and techniques. Editing film and audio into a short clip has involved the use of a new skillset. Linda acknowledges that it takes time to understand each other’s starting point and philosophical stances, and to work out how we each ‘tick’ and how we prefer to work. We have also found that we each have particular interests in different tasks, such as editing, writing (blog posts) and writing up.

Outputs
Paul and Linda decided that as they enjoyed exploring their common experience and differences so much, it would be good to incorporate this into how they approach their collaboration. They decided that the “outputs” of their collaboration, which called “Mutually Intelligible” would be a short film, blog posts and presentation to the Doctoral College. Making the film also produced three audio files, which were transcribed, coded, analysed and will be written up.

Paul and Linda believe that they can possibly use their experience of collaborating in Opposites Attract to use video methods for continuing the project in partnership with other universities in the region, possibly by applying for funding. They are also considering writing a joint conference paper based on the questions and themes which we have decided to explore in the collaboration.

https://youtu.be/lpfvBIBnNgI