As Sarah observed this morning, it feels like we are ‘in the very thick of it’ with the project at the moment. It’s an exciting time as we are well into our fieldwork. We have conducted many of our second repeat group interviews, and been able to see how a lot of our research participants can be as passionate about the issues we’re talking about as are the research team.
It’s really at these second group interviews where we find that people have been mulling over previous conversations, and come back with new perspectives – which helps to underline why this research design works. A couple of times we have even had text messages or emails from participants after leaving an interview, wanting to add things to what they said, showing that people are continuing to think about our discussion even after they leave. It also illustrates that this type of project not only relies on the work of academic researchers – it depends on the input and energies of the people who share their time and experiences with us and really help us to think through our research questions.
More formally, our Advisory Groups in the three localities have started to meet, specifically to help us consider how we are framing our research in their area, what other aspects we might explore locally, and how we can communicate our findings to a wider public of local people in the later stages of the project. These first meetings have been very stimulating and helpful, and again we were pleased that our project seems to resonate with people coming from different institutions or perspectives, and grateful that Advisory Group members were willing and able to share their valuable local connections to hone our research.
Several research participants have told us how much they enjoyed spending time talking about everyday diversity and the place where they live with other people, discovering how others share their perspectives or come at these issues from different directions. In the world of social research where we often struggle to find participants and worry about asking them to commit time and share their experiences with us, this is both pleasing and a bit surprising! It also goes to show that the project is exploring something which does matter to people beyond the walls of academia, and that’s reassuring.
Though we still have plenty of fieldwork to go, we are starting to contemplate the data we’ve collected, and we’re planning the conference papers we’ll be giving on emerging findings from the project later this year. We’re convening two panels at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in Los Angeles in April. We are also pleased that we have had two papers accepted to panels at the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference in London in August. In addition, Katy will be presenting a paper at the Emotional Geographies Conference in Groningen in July. So we will be getting out there in the world of academia – and as we do, we will be taking the enthusiasm and thoughts of our research participants out to that wider world. Maybe we will see you there?