I am very grateful for the invitation and the opportunity to discuss my
doctoral research with you.
The outline ..
1. Dissertation
2. Reflecting on the process and recommendations
3. Post-dissertation process
I will first summarize my dissertation and then reflect back on my own
process, what I learned from it. Some of them by doing it right and other
by doing it wrong So I will try to turn this reflection into
recommendations to you.
Reflecting on the process and
recommendations
Research as a process, not collection of technical steps
I knew the territory if I may use a very colonial imagery. But still it took
more than 5 years. Why?
I had an advantage while writing my proposal for the ÖAW DOC. I had my
master research on urban renewal. I was in ten different neighborhoods
which were under urban renewal threat. I knew the material, events,
actors, issues and the discussions, the limits, the gaps in the literature…
and this not in a limited disciplinary fashion. I have situated it always in a
wider political question.
If you end your research as you began, something must be wrong. It
means you didn’t do research. You follow some mechanical steps of data
collection, analysis, literature review, discussion of results etc.
If you don’t come with new questions in your research, again no research.
All together if you do not change along your research, you do probably no
research.
2. It is also the same with the secondary literature, the next related
research. If you say what everybody has said, you did say nothing.
If you do your research in the same way they did, you will arrive at the
same results.
If you use same theoretical approach, you again arrive at the same end.
You must do something different.
Everybody confirms and applauses what they already know. If nobody
contests your argument, you don’t have an argument, you don’t a new
knowledge.
You must take risks in your research question, in your methodological
approach, in your critique.
There is a status quo of knowledge and the truth regimes in the scientific
world. Nothing in sciences is free even if we love to talk of academic
freedom etc. You must calculate trends and risks. If you really interested in
politics of knowledge and not happy with the status quo of academic
knowledge regimes you must take risks. Taking risks requires a net of
support and care, some degree of protection from academic hostility. You
will need people who care about your questions and research. Your
examiners are important!
4. Transdiciplinarity
Feed yourself and your research with the concepts and approaches from
other fields and disciplines.
Around my topic there was some dominating approaches: 1. Normative
fields of disaster studies and critical approaches among them like political
ecology.2. In urban theory, the critical urban theory is the dominant
approach. 3. Theories of biopolitics.
I found the location and resource for my critical theoretical approach with
the help of black feminist scholars, and scholars of postcoloniality and
decoloniality. Even if you know what you are not comfortable with, you
learn from them to formulate and conceptualize it. we produce knowledge
and with that part of the sociomaterial world we are researching and how
it will be unfolding. So, our knowledge is situated as Harraway said, and
we are responsible for the knowledge we produce. It is not outside of us
and not neutral, but part of cosmologies that sustain the order of things as
Sylvia Wynter put it.
Caspar David Friedrich, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, Oil on canvas
So don’t use concepts uncritically however they might be sexy and trendy.
Concepts are explanation frames, lead you to think in a certain way.
Therefore, they are also empirical material.
Writing
Writing is not what you do after the research. Writing is a part of it. Write
from the beginning. Write while reading.
Do not read passively. Think always on your own questions and arguments.
Learn to extract the arguments of the articles and books. Write them in
one sentence if possible. If not in two-three sentences. Never summarize
an article at length. You will only remember at these core arguments which
is what you will need anyway. And you will forget the texts you
summarized at length.
Do not just read secondary literature. Read theoretical text related to the
concepts you use.
You can use the Zettlekasten method of Niklas Luhmann. There are digital
tools for it now, like obsidian. It is a thinking tool based on the idea that
writing is thinking.
TIME
Do your research continuously. Everyday an hour for example. When you
don’t have that time, just open it and read what you have done for 15
minutes. Because research needs time. If you do it in the way I suggested
your mind works even if you do something else.
Thinking in the world involves acknowledging our own involvements in
perpetuating dominant values, rather than retreating into the secure
position of an enlightened outsider who knows better. (Puig de la
Bellacasa, 2012, 197)
This is what we call critique (You know the work of Koselleck Die Krise, as
he points out the modern bourgeouise subjectivity, the critique and the
crisis – how they reproduce the philosophy of the history) (The same
period of emergence of interior)