Author: Emma Jean Kelly, PhD Candidate
I love Professor Welby Ings. It’s not every day I’d say that about a lecturer, but Prof Ings really is amazing. I first saw him speak at his Inaugural Professorial Lecture last year. I’ve been to those events before, but this was different. It was held at the Herald Theatre at the back of the Aotea Centre, and there were drinks before the lecture (hooray!) Then, as we walked into the theatre we were handed little boxes of popcorn. OK, I thought. What’s going to happen next? Prof Ings talked about his work a little, he quoted some of the theorists that have helped him along the way. And then he told us how lately, he’s been making films. And so rather than talk too much about method and methodology (though what he did say was fascinating), he just showed us the film, Munted. What a film it is – it’s live action, but also incorporates drawing and written elements. We were entranced, and when it was over even Dr Rob Allen who had been asked to close the lecture on behalf of the Vice Chancellor felt there was nothing any of us could say to top the poignancy and beauty of the film, so he didn’t even try. And then we all stood up spontaneously to congratulate Prof Ings (and I think he’d hate me calling him that, he’s Welby) on his marvellous achievements.
So when I heard that Welby was going to be speaking at the plenary session of the Postgraduate Symposium at AUT last year I wasn’t going to miss seeing him speak again for anything. I’m a PhD student in Communications, so perhaps it’s a given that I’d like his work. But I showed this lecture it to a friend who is doing her PhD in Engineering, and she loved it too and found Welby’s ideas equally useful in thinking through some of the tougher moments in her thesis writing experience. One of the many things Welby is interested in is the process of working through a research problem to develop our intellectual independence and how supervisors support their students to do so. As Welby says, it’s the tragedy of our education system that we have to wait until the last years of our schooling (ie Postgraduate) before we get to determine the nature of the question ourselves, critically examine and develop our own method and the methodology that sits over top of it. Welby knows the rules of the academic game inside and out. But he also knows that research is a creative enterprise, no matter what your discipline is. It will never go according to plan, and it will always be exciting and worthwhile if you stick with it and trust your own ability and the support of your supervisor, whether you’re studying Economics, Education, or the genetic structure of the sea squid.
Thanks to the Postgraduate Centre of AUT for asking Welby to give this talk. It was an inspirational beginning to a fabulous day, and I look forward to this year’s offering at the Postgraduate Symposium. Watch this lecture if you want to see some genuinely funny audio visual clips, some serious intellectual reflection, a couple of new theorists to think about and come away with a feeling that no matter how far you may seem off track with your study on the odd occasion, others have been there before you, and those difficult moments can actually be the crux of your development as an independent intellectual thinker in the postgraduate study process.
