Author: Emma Jean Kelly, PhD Candidate, Communications School, DCT
Ring the bells
That still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
These words, from Leonard Cohen’s ‘Anthem’ were presented by Associate Professor Lynne Giddings during her session on Feminist Research at the Qualitative Methodological Masterclass series held in the Health and Environmental Sciences Faculty in February this year. Positivism, Postpositivism, Foulcauldian theory, Feminist theory, Qualitative Descriptive Phenomenology, Grounded Theory, Poststructuralism…all these research paradigms and methodologies were considered, debated and discussed in detail over the five days of the workshop. It was extraordinary, and very helpful to a growing sense of my own research practice and where it is placed in the ‘Paradigm Research Model’ which Lynne uses in her teaching.
Suffrage Week is coming up and it’s a particularly important year, being the 120th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage in NZ. AUT is going to have a Women’s Week from 16th to 20th September with a great variety of events to get involved in. To honour this occasion, I wanted to share and highlight the work of the wonderful feminists at AUT (like Lynne), and thank them for their collegial attitude towards students and staff which has made my PhD study experience so enjoyable (which does not mean it’s been easy!)
It has been one of the joys of transferring both my PhD and my employment to Auckland University of Technology, to find a number of academics who embody the scholarly spirit of collegiality. Sharing, showing, open curious enquiry which is not restricted by disciplinary boundaries is alive here. Those at the Methodological Masterclass embodied this spirit of intellectual adventure that I have come to associate with AUT academics.
As postgraduate students, it’s easy to become so focused on our own topic and discipline that we forget the wider academic and learning landscape. It’s important of course to really narrow our attention to our topics, and I’m sure my supervisors will quite agree that I haven’t always done this as well as I might. But by taking the wider view, I do feel my PhD thesis has benefitted. For example, it was a Foucault Discussion Group organized by Dr Joanne Fadyl in Health Sciences that really pushed me to articulate my own views and understandings to experienced researchers and lecturers. This took a lot of courage, but because Jo and other group members (largely from the Health Sciences) such as David Nicholls, Lynne Giddings, Deborah Payne, Vivienne Hogan (Education) et al are generous and patient, it has not been so difficult, and often times lots of fun.
Similarly, getting involved with the AUT Women on Campus group has led me to meet women from all over the University and learn about their work and their disciplines. Through Women on Campus and Lynne Giddings’ enthusiasm to bring women together to discuss issues that affect women, I’ve become involved in weekly Friday breakfasts called ‘Just Women Talk’ which have illuminated me on the history of women staff and students at AUT. For example did you know Women on Campus has been running since the 1980s and has an email group list of over 380 women? The ‘Just Women Talk’ group is diverse and they are not afraid of using the ‘f word’ (that’s feminism). We talk about how women have been and are at AUT as well as in the media, in wider academia and in society. Again, like the Foucault Discussion Group, this has forced me to be brave and try to articulate ideas about my own work, and pushed my growing intellectual knowledge and boundaries. Many of the women at ‘Just Women Talk’ model the behaviors many of us admire and want to celebrate at AUT. For example, I’ve noticed many of them never tell you directly what to do, but they do show a huge patience and understanding for others which rubs off on the group. Many of the women have such experience and knowledge, but never flaunt it. They gently nudge each other to think a bit harder, more carefully, and to work together to find solutions to difficulties. They are lively and curious intellectuals who also have a strong sense of social justice. Similarly the student Feminist Collective (and various members of the Tertiary Education Union which I am also involved in) have pushed me to consider feminism as a form of social justice which moves beyond gender binaries. People in those groups remind me that Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex issues of injustice are still alive and well for us all.
And so all these wonderful feminists in my life (and please note not all these people are women – feminism means you believe in equality, it doesn’t mean you are necessarily a woman) have helped me as I work through my PhD thesis process which, as a part time student, has been long and at times quite painfully difficult. What I have learned from these people in various faculties and directorates across the University, is that others also have similar challenges regardless of discipline, and there are many ways of getting through – one is to talk with others and learn from them. A number of feminists have mentored and modeled careful and thoughtful ways of being in the world which I have found invaluable in my PhD thesis process and my life in general. I have been encouraged by these people to present my work in a number of forums and to facilitate groups which have really helped my confidence in my ability to speak in public, culminating in me delivering my first ever lectures to students recently.
When Lynne first played the Leonard Cohen song which opens this piece, I wondered why. I went home and I listened to the song. Then it got stuck in my head, and I had to think about it some more. At first I thought it was a bit grim and apocalyptic, but as I reflected further, I realized what it meant for us – academia, like life, is about pushing boundaries, finding the space between structures, those interstitial moments when new ways of thinking and being come to light. The crack lets the light in, and the light is new knowledge, moments of elucidation and clarity. We are, after all, according the Education Act 1989 tasked to be the ‘critic and conscience’ of society. For me, learning is sometimes a slow movement towards understanding (my supervisors might say a VERY slow movement towards understanding 😉 and thinking about this song has been one of my movements towards enlightenment in my own thinking, to the pushing of my own boundaries. Thanks to a number of people at AUT, I understand my own studies and my own motivations that much better than I did before. I am now happy to say I’m a Feminist Scholar and I have an agenda – social justice through rigorous research, and a desire to work in a collegial environment where I can model the grace under pressure and intellectual curiosity that I have been lucky enough to observe in the staff at AUT, no matter what their discipline. I look forward to the wonderful Suffrage Week celebrations we are going to have in September (don’t forget 16-20th) and I hope you will all attend an event or two. You never know what you may learn!
