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Introduction to Together We Create Series 2 - what UCL’s social scientists gain from collaborative partnerships
What do we mean when we talk about collaborative social science? Why is collaborative research useful? What are the standout themes of the collaborative projects featured in this second season of Together We Create? In this episode, we discuss these questions and more with Professor Carey Jewitt, Chair of UCL's Collaborative Social Science Domain.
Carey Jewitt is Professor of Technology and Learning at the UCL Knowledge Lab, based in the Department of Culture, Communication and Media at the Institute of Education. She brings her interdisciplinary training from fine art and media, sociology, and multimodal discourse to research how the use of digital technologies shapes people’s interaction, communication, and learning in a variety of contexts.
Transcript
Speakers
Lili Golmohammadi, Professor Carey Jewitt
Lili Golmohammadi 00:12
Hello and welcome to Together We Create, a podcast about collaborative social research. My name is Lili Golmohammadi and I'm a collaborative researcher working across design technology and social research at UCL. In each episode of the series, I'll be talking to an academic at UCL to find out more about how and why social researchers collaborate with researchers outside of their own discipline, and hearing about them and their research as we discuss the benefits and challenges of taking a multidisciplinary approach.
Lili Golmohammadi 00:46
But to kick off the series today, I'm joined by Carey Jewitt, Professor of Technology and Learning at the UCL Knowledge Lab, and Chair of the Collaborative Social Science Domain at UCL. Carey, you're very much hidden behind the scenes in the production of this podcast and so it's a pleasure to now have the chance to chat with you about some of the ideas behind it. Can you start by saying something about what we mean when we talk about collaboration, both between the social sciences and between the social sciences, humanities, and natural and applied sciences?
Professor Carey Jewitt 01:19
I think we probably all mean something slightly different when we talk about collaboration. But at the core of it, what we mean within the collaborative social science domain is not that we're just sitting alongside one another as either a social scientist or someone working in the humanities or engineering, for example, we're not just sitting there doing what we'd normally do on our own, and then knitting it together like a patchwork at the end, what we mean is something collaborative, where we work together to co create the questions, the focus of a project, maybe it's mix up some of our methodologies, rather than just doing them as we always do them. So collaboration is about thinking together, doing things together, and probably coming up with something new or more holistic through that process.
Lili Golmohammadi 02:13
Why would you say... I think you've kind of started to talk about why it matters, but why're you particularly passionate about it?
Professor Carey Jewitt 02:22
So I'm really passionate about collaborative research and research methods more generally. And it's quite simple why really, I think it gives us the best chance of understanding really complex ideas, and a lot of ideas that we might think of as being an engineering problem or an architecture problem. When we have a health problem, I think we often need social scientists to come in and work alongside the people in those complex areas to really understand where the social fits in and to get new kinds of questions or really find a way into the complexity of an issue.
Lili Golmohammadi 03:04
And this podcast series showcases some of the amazing projects that do that that have been funded by UCL's Collaborative Social Science Domain. So yeah, could you say something about how and why the domain seed funding scheme came about, and what its focus and mission is?
Professor Carey Jewitt 03:24
It came about as a key part of the domain's work, which is to foster and encourage collaborative social science across UCL because I mean, UCL is pretty amazing place, it's very big. We've got people from all the different disciplines across UCL. But sometimes when a place is so big, it can be quite hard to find one another to find people to work with around. You might think, "oh, actually, it'd be great to have a sociologist on this project," or it'd be great to have an engineer to work with to maybe build me some things so that I can ask them social questions about technology in a new way. But how do we find each other? So the fund was set up to see these new conversations, and its mission is to develop new networks across UCL and beyond that have social science at their heart, but really co creating ideas around different phenomena. And also to do that in a way that builds capacity within UCL for thinking about doing the methods involved in collaborative social science, and also to lead through to a larger project. So we're trying to establish these conversations to build something bigger.
Lili Golmohammadi 04:44
It's a quite competitive scheme and depending on funds, only one to three projects have been funded each year. So in this season of the podcast we featured four from recent years. We had Professor Jessica Ringose's projects on teenagers' experiences of unsolicited sexual images on social media. Dr. Aaron Parker's on offworld living. Dr. Daniel Oviedo's on E scooters and transport related social exclusion. And, finally, Dr. Tone Walford and Dr. Cecilia Chavana-Bryant's project on environmental data justice. So what would you say were the key qualities of these projects that made their applications so successful?
Professor Carey Jewitt 05:24
Well, I think even just from the titles, you can tell that they're really imaginative. And they're very - they've taken ideas or areas of research that you can really understand why you might want a multi disciplinary team to work on those areas. So one thing is that as a new collaboration, so all of those ideas spawned a desire to have new conversations with with new scholars across UCL, that's really key for us. The key feature is that it's not we're not funding a cumulative, ongoing relationship, we're seeding something new, and that all of them are genuinely inter and cross disciplinary, so there's this deep interest, say like offworld, living as a deep interest in how living on the Moon or Mars or just living in really extreme conditions on planet Earth might need us to bring in architects, people working in bodily health, bone specialists, nutritionists, garment design, all sorts of different questions about how we might live. And so all of these projects that we fund have deep interest in the holistic complexity of a phenomenon. And that brings together these different researchers, and the desire to understand the area in an interdisciplinary way. And they're, they're imagining as research as well, kind of pushing at the boundaries, sometimes developing new technologies, sometimes new methodologies. So there's this real boundary pushing. And something we introduced more recently, following the impact of COVID on early career researchers networking, was that we encouraged all of the projects to have an early career development plan to be really be thinking about how to build capacity for collaborative research within early career research.
Lili Golmohammadi 07:30
As an early career researcher myself, I really appreciate that final point. So you, you mentioned that one of the benefits of doing collaborative research and the aims of the seed funding is that it can lead to the development of novel methodologies. So how has the seed funding scheme supported this process? What are some examples of novel methodologies emerging in the projects that we featured and this season, do you think?
Professor Carey Jewitt 08:00
Well, I don't want to give all the stories away before people listen to them. But just to say, I think that all of those in the series have developed or extended new and novel methods at some level. So for example, Aaron has developed these things called micro analogues, and talking about prototyping in novel ways. And Jessica has talked about the use of images as a way of eliciting and evoking young people's responses to complex and taboo subjects. I think both of those are really powerful examples.
Lili Golmohammadi 08:38
Also, we had Tone and Cecilia's projects on environmental data and kind of trying to ask different questions about what environmental data might look like, or, or be, and really pushing the boundaries of that, but you know, to, to think about it beyond this kind of objective thing that you just collect, and, and making it more of a data and more of a two way conversation. So yeah, I'll stop there, because we don't want to give too much away, as you said.
Professor Carey Jewitt 09:08
Just to say that they they've got a lovely idea of data living - live data. And I think the liveliness of the data comes across in all of these projects.
Lili Golmohammadi 09:20
Absolutely. Absolutely. So something that also came across very strongly this season was the power of interdisciplinary collaboration in research to make a real difference to people's lives. This included collaboration between academic disciplines, but also with different stakeholders outside of academia, and that seemed to really enhance the impact of their, and reach of their, research. Could you talk a little bit about how some of the projects did this and and also how you think the impact might have been different had these researchers just stayed within their own disciplines or within just academic like circles.
Professor Carey Jewitt 10:01
If we take Daniel Oviedo's project, for example, on e-scooters, I mean, everyone listening probably either loves or hates e-scooters, and probably has different ideas about what should or shouldn't happen to them. And so Daniel partnered up with different stakeholders and different user communities to build a continuing dialogue across across those different groups to think about how policy might look and to work out what were the underpinning factors in in any policy development. So there, he's kind of looking at the social exclusion and inclusion, and trying to understand, you know, how to look beyond data around transport, to look at the social factors of transport and developing a theory around that. And Jessica in setting out to combat sexual harassment in children's lives, had the most amazing impact with her work through inputting into the policy on cyber flashing. And I see this week that the first court cases come through, the first prosecution around for cyber flashing. So her work was able to input into the UK Online Safety Bill, and as well as being foundation for new educational interventions that home colleagues are working on. So partnering up with charities, with policy makers, with different non governmental organisations has really enabled their research to have reach in in the wider world.
Lili Golmohammadi 11:38
Yeah, I, I find that one of the most inspiring things about this season, particularly that yeah, all of our all of our interviewees, all of our projects seem to have that extra level that were they their projects, they are quite a few of them spoke about how when they wrote their projects, or first conceptualised their projects, they didn't imagine quite how far they might go. And they were really amazed and surprised. And delighted by that. And that sort of fed back into the advice they were giving people you know, it's just to just to keep, keep talking to people, keep asking, keep meeting people, because you never know how things are going to snowball.
Professor Carey Jewitt 12:20
I think as well that is about links to the idea of being open and looking for not looking for serendipity but taking serendipitous opportunities. But also it speaks back to the power of working across different disciplines. Because for Jessica, who's primarily a qualitative sociologist, working with a crime expert with quantitative skills enabled her work to be listened to differently by policymakers, politicians. And the same with Aaron's work, working with space industry and agencies, and working across a host of different disciplines, enabled his work to speak to the people that it was about as well as the people it was aimed at. So I think, as well, Tone and Cecilia, working with the people who look after the trees on Hampstead Commons, and all sorts of different organisations, it embeds our research into those local environments and local conversations. So it's all about creating dialogue across different disciplines and different stakeholders.
Lili Golmohammadi 13:35
That's what we want research to be, we want it to be in dialogue with people's lives. And I love the sense of kind of iterative continuity that came through like so just with that last example, the Ancient Tree Forum, who look after oak trees across across the UK, why many ancient trees and some of the work they did that helped the Tree Forum to care for the trees, which was was really lovely.
Lili Golmohammadi 14:01
So we've talked a lot about the benefits of collaborative social research that have come through in the series, what do you think some of the key challenges and tensions seem to be?
Professor Carey Jewitt 14:11
Well, I'm a collaborative social science researcher as well. And I think as always, it's the people - one of the challenges is that when we bring people together, we normally come with different perspectives, different training, different kinds of questions. And managing that is complex, it's very rewarding, but it's also hard work. And I think one of the things that this podcast offers is models, I suppose, of how different people bring those different perspectives together. And that's where new methods can be very powerful because they create a more open space where everybody is slightly learning or slightly being stretched into a place of discomfort. And through that you can start to understand one another as well.
Lili Golmohammadi 15:04
That's really nice. Were there any challenges or tensions that people mentioned that surprised you?
Professor Carey Jewitt 15:10
Aaron talked about some of the challenges about working, I think primarily with engineering because it's such a pragmatic, not not always, but a primarily like problem solving demeanor to a problem. And that's, you know, that's worked really well. But as a result, it's very, very difficult for people to see outside of that, you know, "what's the solution?" So bringing social science and particularly anthropology into that space, brings up some kind of challenges around communicating, like, why you might want to explore a problem rather than straight out go for resolution. So there's different capacities and languages that we need to learn when we move outside of our discipline. And that goes for social scientists as well that we have to understand how to make our work applied. So I think there's all of these questions about how we communicate across disciplines. And just understanding that often, we're using the same words to mean very different things.
Lili Golmohammadi 16:19
Yeah, that came up a lot the the language of, of disciplines, Daniel was also talking about translation that goes beyond language, the different political and cultural contexts, you know, of his work in Colombia, and Mozambique. So just negotiating those and not just parachuting in as well and saying, you know, we've got a fantastic solution for you. So yeah, just curious to know, what were your favorite moments of the season? Did you have any? Can you can you have a favorite? Are you allowed to have a favorite?
Professor Carey Jewitt 16:52
It's such a cliche, but I haven't. I think they're just amazing. And I, I, it's rare to laugh out loud on a serious research podcast, but actually, I found them, I found them very moving and also, at times, quite humorous. And I think sense of humor can get us through so much, especially when we're when we're working across different disciplines. And there might be a little bit of tension there and we need to turn it into something productive. But no, I think they're all amazing.
Lili Golmohammadi 17:22
Yeah, I agree. I agree. I wasn't quite expecting to laugh as much as I did. And talking to Aaron about trampolines and funeral practices. That one really got me. But yeah, I think it's hard to pick out favorite moments, I'm the same. I think it was just incredibly inspiring to get to speak with people doing such such a diverse range of collaborative work.
Lili Golmohammadi 17:48
Finally, was there anything that came through that inspired you to think about doing something different in your own approach to collaborative research? You've been working as a collaborative social scientists for many, many years now, but I'd be very interested to know if there was anything new that came through.
Professor Carey Jewitt 18:04
I think, actually, the idea of some of the methods I found very inspiring. So the use of templates, Jessica's use of templates to kind of scaffold young people's responses to her questioning. They say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I will be taking forward this idea of how I might use templates like that in some of the workshops that I'm going to be doing on for another project. I found Aaron's use of microanalogues, which he explains in his podcast, a really useful way of thinking, thinking about what an environment could be, and I I could see myself, you know, borrowing that method or trying to use it around technology and the kind of work that I thought I do, but yeah, all of it, I thought was amazing. It has been really enjoyable to talk to and listen to the amazing researchers at UCL and to look at the understand the different ways that collaborative social science has been interpreted. And long may it continue.
Lili Golmohammadi 19:11
I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you so much. It's been really really lovely and fun speaking with you.
Lili Golmohammadi 19:23
You've been listening to Together We Create. This episode was presented by myself Lili Golmohammadi, and edited by Cerys Bradley. I was joined today by Professor Carey Jewitt. If you want to find out more about the podcast series, please follow the links in the description. This podcast is brought to you by the UCL Collaborative Social Science Domain