On research seminars, talking to people and learning stuff
Last Thursday saw the School of Law having another go at a little seminar series. We have tried this before and they fizzle out because attendance is usually low and people are busy… However we all do interesting research and we need to make time to talk to each other about it. So in spite of being full of cold and having a cotton wool brain I was really looking forward to it. The plan is to have regular seminars where one of us can present work in progress or even just an idea and we can chat about it. I like that. It’s what academic should be doing – having ideas and talking about them.
Well my wonderful colleague Dr Sanna Elfving has lots of ideas, good ideas and mostly they are about things that I don’t know all that much about. Sanna delivered the first research seminar on her work looking at the regulation of shale gas in the UK. Her slides from the session can be found here:
Elfving SK_UK shale gas regime_12 March 15.
I was struck by three things as we talked about shale gas extraction. First, the idea of pumping water and chemicals deep into the ground under high pressure seems like a bloody stupid idea – perhaps not the best thought to base a legal debate on but it was the first that srpung to mind. The other two points are rather more legal in nature: The regulation, though not specific to shale gas but designed to cover more conventional oil and gas extraction, seems ridiculously complex. There are so many different organisations involved in granting the many different licences which might be required, not to mention the role of planning permissions etc. Doesn’t the complexity mean that it is quite likely that something somewhere falls between the cracks and our health and environmnent are not adequately protected? If you are pro fracking then the complexity is absured, if you are against it, it is worrying.
The other question that arose for me is the obvious gap between politcal rhetoric and politcal will to actually see this happen. The Tories in particualr have pledged their support to fracking but nothing is done to actually facilitate making fracking a reality. Europe (or more accurately the EU but accuracy isn’t always a strong point in these debates) gets blamed for delays but actually there is no European legal framework on this and case law coming from Luxembourg is sending mixed messages (I must ask Sanna about the cases she mentioned, I have already forgotten).
It was a really lovely way to spend an hour and I was again struck by how varied legal scholarship is and how much really interesting stuff there is out there that I don’t really know anything about. More importantly though I also remembered how much fun it is to talk to people about their work, to hear their thoughts and to learn from people who really know their stuff. Research seminars are a good thing, go if you can!
Tweeting My Day
On 23rd September 2014 I tweeted my day. The idea came as a result of an email at work suggesting we could do some video diaries to help each other understand what we all do and the pressures we can be under better so as to ultimately lead to a better understanding of different roles. That in turn should lead to better working relationships. Well, a video diary was just never going to work for me! Twitter however would. So I offered to live tweet a day at work. I tried to do that as honestly and as informatively as possible. There are some details of discussions in meetings which I obviously couldn’t tweet but I hope I have captured what Tuesday this week was like for me, some of what I did, how I felt about it…
I have captured the tweets of the day using storify so you can see the whole thing here: https://storify.com/Jess_Guth/my-day-in-tweets
On reflection, I enjoyed the experience. It did slow me down a little in terms of work. My most efficient time – between 7.30 and 9am – was noticably less efficient but I did go through the day reflecting on what I was doing and why. I was acutely aware of how much coffee I was drinking and that I don’t spend enough time chatting to colleagues about work generally.I also felt connected though and like people were with me – not in a freaky being watched sort of way, more in a supportive kind of way.
I think I might do this again towards the end of term because I think it is really important to stress that there is no such thing as a typical day – had I chosen today or yesterday, the whole thing would have looked very different. That however is why I love my job. I hope it was interesting or entertaining or useful or perhaps a little of each!
Philosophy reading group
For those of you who follow me on twitter – you might have seen me live tweet my day yesterday and the next blog post was supposed to be a summary of that. However, that’s going to have to wait until tomorrow because I did something today which I think is worth blogging about. I think it’s worth blogging about because it is such a simple, yet utterly brilliant idea: I took part in a philosophy reading group. Don’t laugh! I did and it was great.
So often we struggle on our own trying to understand the theories, philosophies and writers that went before. I’ve never really had the opportunity to sit down with people to read specific sections and figure out what they mean and go from there. Usually you get feedback on your application of the philosophies and theories – say through conference papers or similar. This group though is different. The group, as I understand it, isn’t aimed at discussion our own work but steps back from that to help us all get our heads round the philosophers we choose to look at.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. The reading was an extract from Foucault on ‘the Docile Body’ (A chapter from ‘Discipline and Punish’). I have never used Foucault explicitly in my work – probably mainly because I struggle to get my head round it all properly and I’m always scared of making a mistake that will make me look really stupid. I have however, drawn on Judith Butler who seems to draw quite a lot on ideas we also find in Foucault. Anyway, I digress. We only looked at a few pages and yet I feel like I have come away with a far greater understanding of what Foucault’s writing generally is all about. I have more of a handle on how he uses language (bearing in mind of course that we were looking at a translation!) and his key position. It also makes me feel more confident that my thoughts about Foucault were pretty accurate and that I haven’t misunderstood and got it all wrong (which is my default position when it comes to theoretical stuff!)
The really lovely thing about the group was that there was no expectation that anyone knew the answers, we were all just figuring it out together. It was the kind of collaborative, joint, supportive academic work I love. The kind of work that makes you walk away with a bit of a buzz, that makes your brain hurt in a good way and that makes you think about things. I loved it. I’m not entirely sure what I think of Foucault’s work, I’m not entirely sure I understand it all but I am sure that this theoretical stuff is not just something I have to think about – it is now something I want to think about. Thank you to all those who were there. Next time we tackle Nietzsche – just a paragraph of Nietzsche – but then I suspect that a paragraph is really all we can hope to get our heads round in the time we have. It will however be a pragraph more than I understood before and a paragraph more than I could ever hope to understand on my own. So I think I may finally have found a way to overcome my theory issues! I joined a group – who would have thought!
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