Collect 76 highly motivated women scientists from all over the world, 8 talented teaching faculty, a few dozen humpback whales, and a couple of hundred thousand penguins.

Mix together in a small ship in Antarctic waters for 20 days. Stir thoroughly, agitate regularly, shake occasionally. Dip regularly into the icy waters all around. The mixture will separate, sometimes disintegrate then, with careful tending, reform into something new, something truly transformative.

The Homeward Bound alumni are courageous, newly equipped with the vision and tools to enable them to make a difference to the world.

I was lucky enough to participate in the inaugural Homeward Bound expedition to Antarctica in December 2016. I arrived in Ushuaia at the end of November, jetlagged but excited, anticipating gruelling seasickness, stunning landscapes and empowering leadership and strategy training. Homeward Bound exceeded all of my expectations.

This was a truly transformative leadership program. The insights and connections forged during the 20 days at sea will support me to grow and develop as a leader and scientist for the rest of my career.
After a few shaky days finding our sea legs (mine were more wobbly than most), we began the leadership content by considering who we are and why we lead.

We chose our top 10 values from out of a stack of a few hundred possible options. Who knew there were so many to choose from?! Three diagnostics around learning styles, emotional intelligence and self-development formed the basis of the leadership training. We all became very familiar with 4MAT, MSCIET and LSI over the next week, drilling down into our preferences, motivations and behaviours. This was new territory for many scientists, challenging stuff. We were supported with small group work and individual counselling sessions, and it was all framed within the overarching goal of enabling us to be more effective leaders.

Daily landings chock full of stunning scenery, abundant wildlife who appeared quite indifferent to our presence and ample opportunities for tobogganing and snowball fights were a welcome break from the intense learning. This on-land time allowed us to reflect and strengthen connections in an awe-inspiring environment. With the long days of Antarctic summer, we often had after-dinner landings or zodiac cruises. Did the sun ever set? I certainly never saw it happen!

Photo by Sam Grover

After leadership, came visibility. In order to make a difference, who do we need to be visible to? I came to this section of the content with some scepticism, some resistance.

Not a natural social media user, my preconception was that “visibility” equated to a large Twitter following. My soil science research is not particularly tweetable and, juggling research and a young family, ample time for engaging with social media just doesn’t make it into my tight schedule. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to find the visibility content very useful and applicable to my research and aspirations. I want my soils research to inform policy and practise around land use. I identified who I need to become more visible to, and how to go about making this happen. Twitter didn’t feature!

Photo by Sam Grover

Whales! The teaching faculty came to dread this call, as we would all jump up and run out on deck. However fascinating the content, the call of the whales was just too strong. Their presence just a few tens of meters from the ship was somehow incredibly calming. No-one was immune to the serenity that these graceful creatures seemed to emanate. Juxtaposed with the macabre remains of the whaling stations we visited, humanity’s reliance on whale oil and near extinction of these peaceful creatures appeared as a strange nightmare from our past.

Many Homeward Bound alumni want to ensure that the remains of the fossil fuel oil industry appear as a similar historical hiccup to future generations.

Strategy: how do we get from here to there? With a strategy map. Aspire, explain, measure what we aim to achieve and how. The third component of the course content made a lot of sense to me and I have used my Personal Strategy Map back home already.

Photo by Sam Grover

As our days grew numbered, we went out of our way to develop potential collaborations. “Let’s sit together at dinner and discuss X.” “Oh yes, let’s invite Y too.”

The projects that were discussed are too numerous to mention, and some will take wings soon, while others require further rumination.

The final two days of the journey were rough. The sea was rough and I was confined to my cabin, vomiting constantly and daydreaming of home to while away the hours. A visit from the ship’s doctor, and a huge needle in the rear, but to no avail.

I knew I was prone to seasickness and I was willing to endure it to participate in this incredible journey. Returning to green land, to rich soil, forests and peatlands and bountiful life reaffirmed my reverence for the earth.

My pledge, as Homeward Bound alumni, is to step forward and lead to a more sustainable future for all life on the planet.

If you would like to read more about the Homeward Bound project, then check out their website here!

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Dr Samantha Grover is a soil scientist at AgriBio. She is passionate about research that makes a difference.

She aspires to build her research expertise by collaborating both within soil science and across related disciplines and to contribute to research projects that benefit society.

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Safe Schools Coalition Australia | safeschoolscoalition.org.au

This attention has focused on what many have described as ‘ideological’ elements of the program’s content, or on fabricated stories about what actually goes on in schools. 

Roz Ward co-founded, developed and currently directs Safe Schools Coalition Victoria (SSCV), the first Australian program to specialise in supporting gender diversity and sexual diversity in schools. SSCV provided the model for the federally funded national program which has received international recognition for best practice from UNESCO. Through research-driven resources, teacher education and policy advocacy, the program promotes practical measures for creating affirming and inclusive learning environments for same sex attracted, gender diverse and intersex students, staff and families.

The post The research foundation for creating Safe Schools Coalition Victoria (Roz Ward) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

So, you’ve got an idea for a research project.

You’ve probably reviewed some of the literature to help you focus and fine-tune your idea to a more manageable project to fit with the timelines you have.

You have had to constantly remind yourself that you are one person with limited resources and interviewing 5000 people isn’t going to be a reasonable expectation and that’s OK.

In the end, you decide that 32 participants will give you sufficient data to analyse and write about.

But how do you get 32 participants to take part in your research?

Where do you find 32 people who are willing to spend some of their time with you, possibly discuss a sensitive topic or give you some of their blood to test?

And how do you make sure the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) will be accepting of the way you wish to recruit your participants?

Well, let’s start with the HREC. For an HREC to be comfortable with the recruitment methods proposed, recruitment must be fair and coercion free. Participants should be volunteering to take part.

Snowball recruitment is one such method. If you wish to use it, you need to consider whether you risk breaching someone’s privacy or if there’s a chance of real or perceived coercion. There are two ways to apply snowball recruitment:

1. To ask current participants to pass on the contact details of potential participants to you as a researcher. 

This creates concerns around privacy. Did the potential participant know current participants would be handing out their personal information to La Trobe researchers? Probably not.

It can also lead to complaints. For example, how often is too often to contact someone about taking part in a research project? If there is a potential for a breach of privacy, you must demonstrate the potential benefits of the research proceeding in such a manner and explain why it is necessary.

2. To ask current participants to pass on details about the study to potential participants. 

This could be something as simple as passing on the Participant Information Statement or creating business cards with your contact details on and/or details of the study. Ethics committees usually prefer this.

WAYS TO RECRUIT 

There are lots of ways to recruit participants, including:

• online forums; 
• through social media advertisements; 
• search engine advertising; 
• word of mouth; 
• use of professional networks to spread the word; 
• setting up a stall at conferences or events; 
• hardcopy posters put up on noticeboards around campus; 
• using existing databases to obtain contact details of potential participants; 
• collaborating with researchers conducting similar projects with similar participant cohorts; 
• placing an advertisement or notice in a relevant newsletter or on a relevant webpage; or
• creating a website, logo, acronym and marketing plan for the project.

My top four tips for you to consider when planning the recruitment part of your project are:

1. Plan to use more than one avenue for recruitment. 
Think of it more like a recruitment strategy.

2. Explain your recruitment strategy in your human ethics application. 
You wouldn’t believe the number of times I see ‘I will put up posters’ with no information on where and no draft provided of the poster.

If you plan to use Facebook, explain how. Will you set up a Facebook page specifically for the study, will you use Facebook advertising, how will you manage the comments, will you try to keep personal and professional separate or utilise your personal networks? All this needs to be thought through and explained to the HREC.

3. Be creative. 
Recruiting participants can be really hard and sometimes you may need to think outside the box.

4. Ensure your recruitment methods are appropriate for the participants you need to recruit. 
This may seem really obvious but it’s also really important. A method that isn’t appropriate can cause risk to participants and can mean you spend a hell of a lot of time figuring out how to do something that isn’t going to be worthwhile.

Here are a couple of great papers from La Trobe researchers, which outline a number of different ways to recruit:

• Morgan, A. J., Jorm, A. F., & Mackinnon, A. J. (2013). Internet-based recruitment to a depression prevention intervention: Lessons from the Mood Memos study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15(2), e31. doi: 10.2196/jmir.2262
• Harris, M. L., Loxton, D., Wigginton, B., & Lucke, J.C. (2015) Recruiting online: Lessons from a longitudinal study of contraception and pregnancy intentions of young Australian women, American Journal of Epidemiology, 181(10):737-746

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Other useful links:

• Sara Paradowski’s post on getting your human research ethics application through smoothly
• La Trobe Human Research Ethics

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Sara Paradowski joined La Trobe in November 2013 as the Senior Human Ethics Officer.


She has worked in a research ethics environment for nearly 6 years, and has previously worked with a Human Research Ethics Committee, an Animal Ethics Committee, and an Institutional Biosafety Committee. These experiences provide her with a broad knowledge of research governance.


Sara’s role at La Trobe University is to provide executive support to the University Human Ethics Committee (the registered HREC at La Trobe), and advice on human research ethics to the institution’s students and researchers.

The post Recruiting people for your research project – plan ahead! (Sara Paradowski) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Not always! And if you’re a field ecologist, you get to become really dirty, too.

Ursula has recently returned from fieldwork on the Tawaki project, which explores the behaviour and ecology of New Zealand’s elusive forest penguins.

She has written about the experience for us here at the RED Alert.

We decided to call him Hank.

He was a small but dedicated male penguin attending to his fluffy 1-week-old chick in the cosy cave he had chosen for raising his family. Mum was foraging at sea as is typical for Fiordland penguins (otherwise known as tawaki). Maybe Hank would join her in a few weeks, battling the surf, once junior was a bit more grown up and better able to look after himself.

Hank and junior, Fiordland penguins/Tawaki, Southwest New Zealand. | Photo by Ursula Ellenberg

Many of his neighbours in more open nests had already lost their offspring to stoats and were now attending empty nest bowls. Left without the demanding job of raising their young, they started to squabble and fight among each other. Not a good neighbourhood to raise your chicks, even without the looming threat of a next stoat attack!

Tawaki pair that recently lost their chick, Southwest New Zealand. Female in front, male with chunkier bill behind. | Photo by  Ursula Ellenberg. See video of Tawaki and the impact of  stoat attacks here.

Finding him in this predicament, we started to trap stoats around the last remaining nests. A win-win for all, since we needed active nests for our research into the marine ecology of this enigmatic penguin species.

Although we were quite successful, we were well aware that our trapping efforts would do little to reduce the overall impact of this year’s plague of stoats. It was a proverbial drop in the ocean.

The New Zealand Department of Conservation is hugely under-resourced and the beautiful West Coast forests have grown silent, with not a sound apart from the crashing of waves and the odd call of an oyster catcher on the rocky shore below. Few visitors to New Zealand are aware of the missing “soundscape” and most will only take pictures of stunning landscapes completely unaware of the death surrounding them.

Scenic view from the Hilltop penguin colony, Southwest New Zealand. | Photo by Ursula Ellenberg

I’d just worked two weeks on Codfish Island, the predator-free Kakapo haven in the west off Stewart Island, which is buzzling with endemic birdlife. I was very much aware how this forest should sound like. The West Coast silence hit me like a punch in the face. As much as I love my research and the ‘Eureka!’ moments when pieces of the scientific puzzle fall into place, it’s hard work staying an optimist while documenting the struggle of endangered species in this increasingly challenging world.

You may be wondering how I got here? Retrospectively, it all makes sense: I grew up in a family of scientists with an unhealthy fondness for academia, spending heaps of time outdoors observing, and never getting straight answers to all my burning questions (and thus learning to do research myself at an early age!). Today, I catch myself not giving straight answers to my kids’ straight questions and seeing the same rolling eyes I must have displayed when losing patience with my professorial relatives. “It must run in the family!” I think to myself, while quietly grinning under the dripping rim of my hat.

Fieldwork in remote areas has lots of challenges. The immediacy of it certainly takes your mind off other things! We’ve braved torrential rain, landslides, and six-metre swells while clambering on rocky outcrops in search of penguins in the thick coastal forests. The penguins carry our expensive GPS dive data-loggers on their foraging trips. Given these working conditions, it’s hardly surprising that so little is known about New Zealand’s elusive forest penguins.

Tawaki (almost) safely back ashore after a successful foraging trip, Southwest New Zealand. | Photo by Ursula Ellenberg

But I had better pay attention to what I’m doing right now… There was Mrs Hank, an athletic female tawaki already well up the bouldery beach, heading towards the penguin breeding areas.

I caught her just in time and swiftly relieve her of the GPS logger before she dived into the dripping wet West Coast forest. “Thank you for your cooperation”, I mumbled, releasing her up the track she was planning to take. She hurried on uphill to feed her hungry chick. The data on the logger was well worth the effort!

Tawaki face many threats ranging from introduced predators to fisheries interactions, pollution and climate change. This season, we deployed 30 GPS loggers on nesting tawaki at three breeding locations along New Zealand’s rugged and inaccessible southwest. The data we obtained will not only contribute to shedding light on tawaki marine ecology, at-sea behaviour, and foraging hot-spots, but also enable us to inform effective conservation management decisions.

For me, this is what it’s all about: trying to make this world a better place for humans and other wildlife.

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Ursula Ellenberg is an ecologist with keen interest and broad background in both terrestrial and marine systems. 


She joined La Trobe in 2014 as a lecturer in the Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution. Ursula is advancing conservation science with her team of enthusiastic and self-motivated students. She thrives on understanding how environmental disturbances and threatening processes impact animal physiology, behaviour, and ultimately population persistence. 

Ursula has worked in a range of different research environments coordinating fieldwork and leading research projects in Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Canada, Germany, and the Norwegian Arctic. 


Ursula tweets occasionally at @ulnberg.

The post About penguins and silent West Coast forests: Fieldwork experiences of an ecologist (Ursula Ellenberg) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

In Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen tells Alice, in her youth, she could believe ‘as many as six impossible things before breakfast’.

As a parent, PhD student and worker, I’m sure that I am not alone in sometimes feeling as though I have achieved many more than six impossible things before breakfast!

Research is difficult and fitting fieldwork into a busy life is particularly challenging as it requires conforming to external timetables.

My fieldwork involves long and often emotional interviews with women in their homes. It all takes time: setting up the interviews, finding my way to unknown places, clearing a whole day in my diary and my mind for an interview. On interview days, when I eventually get the children to school and childcare, I relate more to Alice than the White Queen: ‘I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then’.

Yet, I have learnt that parenting and fieldwork can coexist – most days.

So, with apologies to Lewis Carroll, here are six things that have made my PhD fieldwork a little less impossible:

1.  ‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely.

Starting anything to do with a PhD seems to be difficult. It’s easy to fall into the trap of delaying fieldwork. There is always one more journal article to read before you will be completely prepared to begin. I didn’t feel at all ready for my first interview but, in hindsight, I’m glad that I threw myself in the deep end.

As soon as I received ethics clearance, I organised some friendly ‘guinea pigs’ as my first interviewees. I quickly discovered that a real interview is quite different from a trial in your living room. It is only in the field that you learn how things work for you.

So, my advice is to just begin.

2. ‘Keep your temper’, said the Caterpillar.

Planning interviews takes much longer than I imagined and requires patience.

I have discovered that retired women are not sitting around knitting socks waiting for a researcher to interview them. People have their own lives and, as the researcher, we are making demands on their time. Co-ordinating timetables, posting information and testing recording equipment takes time. It takes me around a week to prepare for one interview. Appointments also change. My ‘recording bag’ is always packed with several copies of consent forms, audio-recorder, extension cord, batteries, laptop, USB, notebook, two pens, tissues and a bottle of water.

3. ‘—but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I’ve got to?’

Running late is not a way to begin anything. I have learnt to allow for my poor sense of direction and aim to arrive an hour early. I use this time to prepare. If there is no cafe nearby, I park in a side street and take the opportunity to calm myself, have a drink, check over my notes and still be on time.

Most importantly, I record my pre-interview notes: my emotions and expectations of the interview, the weather, what was on the radio and current events. One of my initial interviews was the morning after the terrorist attacks in Paris. I recorded this in my diary and it helped make sense of a reference when re-listening to the interview many months later.

4. ‘The time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships – and sealing wax – of cabbages and kings’

Once the recording equipment is plugged in, I try to be in the moment.

This is the one time in my life that I practice mindfulness. I chase away thoughts of washing, dinner, or the school lunch left on the kitchen bench.

The “record” button is my signal to concentrate on the interview.

5. ‘It’s ridiculous to leave all the conversation to the pudding!’

After my first few interviews, I rushed back to pick up children and straight into the madness of dinner and bedtime routines. By the time I got to writing up my interview reflections, several hours had passed. This was a mistake.

In a few hours things can be forgotten: a particular smile, hand gesture or eye movement. All add depth and texture to an interview. I now factor in time immediately after the interview to write up my notes. This can be anywhere but I believe this time is crucial. I would prefer to cut the interview short than miss it. I have found it helps to give myself verbal reminders in the interview – ‘I see you are drawing that with your hands.’

6. ‘Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come to-day. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!’

Sometimes, interviews don’t work: we push the wrong button, the SD card fills up, a truck roars passed at a crucial moment, or we miss a cue. Even experienced interviewers make mistakes – or so I am told. An interview is a complex dance between two people and is intrinsically unpredictable. I am learning to enjoy those moments when everything comes together, and to celebrate them with my family.

Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

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Miranda Francis is a history PhD candidate at La Trobe University’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences. 

She is a recipient of a scholarship funded by the Transition to Contemporary Parenthood research program at La Trobe University’s Judith Lumley Centre.

Her research is an oral history of parenting in suburban Melbourne over the second part of the twentieth century. 

It involves life history style interviews with women over sixty focusing on their memories of parenting.

The post Fieldwork interviews, children and other impossibilities (Miranda Francis) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Taking on a PhD while working full-time can be a rewarding experience. I get to delve into an area of intellectual enquiry in a really rigorous way, and in a fashion that I’d be unlikely to undertake during my spare time!

My post today shares my preliminary experiences with research interviews. I hope it will prove useful to others in the social sciences. I present this post with the caveat that I’m by no means an expert in this area, and that these insights are things that I’ve learned along the way.

Within the social sciences – my discipline – candidature often involves establishing your position, concerns and argument within the existing literature and defining your methodological approach. This is often done before attempting to collect your data.

For those who are studying part-time, this can be a considerable journey and one that almost risks the complete abstraction of your original question and motivation for embarking on your journey of enquiry.

In my own case, it’s been a truly humbling experience and one where, quite honestly, the more I “learned” (note those deliberate commas); the more I delved and enquired, the further I seemed to drift away from any kind of absolute clarity about what I was doing.

In other words, the more I learned the less I knew. With this came an acute sense of ambiguity within a boundless ocean of perspectives, enquiries, points of view, etc.

While the journey can be long, once you’ve reached an outline or semi-definite position from which to form your argument, you’ll need to gather your data.

You’ll be presented with the very real task of applying your foundational work to a tangible world of differing uncertainty– something that lives outside of your head: the world of others. Critically, your enquiry will need to be grounded and of some practical use to others, in an applied or theoretical sense.

My journey took me to the semi-structured interview and, with this, a considerable level of anxiety and self-doubt about its effectiveness as a method and my effectiveness as an interviewer!

I was very fortunate that my supervisors have a lot of experience in the area of interviewing and qualitative enquiry, and they were happy to share this expertise and guide me through a lot of my own self-doubt. A really critical point here was their recommendation to produce a pilot study. This involved taking every aspect of the interviewing process: the recruitment; the formal, ethical considerations; the interview itself; the transcription of data; and, finally, a draft analysis.

This process was extremely helpful because I could choose people with whom I was already acquainted, were part of a valid target group, and would be able to appreciate and support the pilot nature of the study at this point. It allowed me to be clearer about the formal processes (starting the participation information statement, acquiring signed consent and explaining the project), the technical requirements (using the audio equipment effectively and testing it in a number of environments), reflection and refinement of the interview questions, the process of transcribing an interview, and the analysis of the data itself.

If you’re about to start using interviews for the first time, I can’t recommend enough doing a pilot study. It really helps you to live through the experience and gain insights that you wouldn’t necessarily have considered. It will also give you an opportunity to reflect again on how well your questions are working.

Right now, at the point of writing this post, I’ve done over twenty interviews and I’m still learning new things every time! It’s a really complex process – there are whole shelves of libraries devoted to the issues!

Here are a few strategies that I think would help those getting started with research interviews:

• Do as much of the technical/formal parts ahead of time (at least a day before), like sending on copies of the paperwork, testing your audio equipment, and recharging your extra set of batteries.
• Send your participate a calendar invite to lock in your date and time. Send them a reminder the day before.
• Bring along hard copies of the paperwork and the consent form.
• You’re probably going to feel mildly to acutely nervous. Try your best to remain calm and remember that it’s not about you – it’s all about your participant. If you transfer this nervousness to your participant, it will be harder for them to relax into the interview and you will be less likely to gain deep insights.
• Quickly form a rapport with your participant. Show an interest in them and find points of common experience early on, but make sure you get into the formal interview as quickly as you can. 
• Rather than taking notes during your interview, make lots of eye contact with your participant and listen to them as closely as possible. Listen for opportunities to ask follow up questions, or to probe their response more deeply. Sometimes, participants will begin making a statement and change the subject – this can be a great opportunity for an unplanned follow up question that delves deeper. 
• My interviews are semi-structured, and it has proven useful to be familiar with the questions, or themes, but not approach the interviews in a rigid way. Every participant is different, and being relaxed, and using cues to adjust the focus of the conversation is one way of keeping the conversation flowing and relaxed. Your participant is more likely to share deep themes if they are relaxed.

I tried to gather some field notes soon after the interview is complete. Sometimes, I use my iPhone to record these as spoken notes. Other times, I scribble down some bullet points if I’m pressed for time but, ultimately, I try to record in long form observations about the interview and how it went. I focus on the environment where the interview took place, the body language, and personal feelings and emotions around how well the discussion went. These notes will provide you with additional context around each discussion.

One of the significant parts of the interview process is the transcription itself. I was very surprised by how time-consuming this can be. I’m not a slow typist, but it can take me a whole day to transcribe a single, one-hour interview! While there is no better way to get close to your data, I’d recommend that you consider transcribing every second interview, and having the others professionally transcribed. It will free up time and energy to focus on recruitment and reflection on your data. My department had some funds available to support research-related expenses, which I was able to apply for after discussion with my supervisors. While you will still need to carefully check your transcriptions for accuracy, this takes 1–2 hours, instead of a whole day. This can also be a good opportunity to take further notes about key parts of your interviews.

Finally, the key thing that I’m discovering even as I write this post is that although I have put countless hours of preparation into positioning my study and delving into theories that surround my topic, research by its nature has an inescapable core: discovery.

I couldn’t help forming assumptions around what I’d find through my interviews, but these are the things you bring as a researcher to your field. Ultimately, you don’t know what you are going to find, and I’ve been finding that I have needed to correct myself and be open to learning the things that I didn’t know were there.

I believe that this open, adaptable approach is necessary with interviews, in order to be able to learn fully from your participants, and have a chance at seeing what it is they have been willing to share with you.

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Jason Murphy works with the La Trobe University Graduate Research School (GRS) as a senior research communications advisor. He manages the GRS website, social media, and newsletters that reach out to graduate researchers. His professional goal is to help make La Trobe a great place to do research.


Jason’s multidisciplinary PhD research focuses on the work of marketing professionals and asks if this contributes to ideologies that reinforce and perpetuate social class. Situated in the field of marketing, the project draws from work in the fields of marketing, anthropology, and the broader social sciences. He tweets at @murphy_jason.

The post From uncertainty to the semi-structured interview (Jason Murphy) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

Striking view that meets the traveller landing in Almaty, Kazakhstan (taken in late spring 2015). Behind the city lies the beautiful Tien Shan mountain range. Photo by Mia Tarp Hansen.

Let’s start out by saying my topic isn’t exactly easy.

Doing research on human rights in repressive states is no dance on roses, as we say in Denmark. Unless you step on the thorns. But it does involve a lot of fun, too.

I remember my very first interview.

I had invited a famous, young, female human rights activist in Kazakhstan for dinner to interview her. She decided on the venue and, at 8pm on a rainy Friday evening in early April, I rocked up to the restaurant that she chose in upper Almaty.

The place was called “Kishlyak” and was serving Uzbek. It was one of those typical post-Soviet restaurants with wooden benches, kitschy interior, live music, and drunken parties full of beer bellies and stiletto heels at every table. There was a distinct smell of beer, cheap perfume, vodka, plov (the Uzbek national rice dish), and a bit of pee stench, too, it must be said. The music and noise was so loud that it was almost impossible to have a conversation.

Having a proper interview would be impossible in this setting.

Aigul* walked in through the entrance, I recognised her immediately from the pictures I had seen of her. She was a charming young Kazakh woman. We greeted each other, and she asked what kind of beer I wanted. I should’ve known this setting would involve (heavy) drinking. I forgot how things worked in the former Soviet Union.

So, we ordered plov, large pints of German beer, and started a long, tipsy conversation about freedom of speech in authoritarian regimes. We talked about sexism, feminist activism, and her life. She told me about her hard upbringing, about how she as a young child worked in her parents’ restaurant and got sexually harassed by the male customers. About how she found her way to the the big city of Almaty, and how she started being a political activist.

And she told me something that has stayed with me: to be involved in human rights, you need courage, first and foremost. Courage to face the repression, persecutions, and fear. I must admit I admired her.

Around midnight, she grabs her phone, and asks me if I want to join her and her friends for karaoke. I laughed, thinking that this odd night could not get weirder, and accepted.

We took a pirate taxi to the outskirts of town, where a dodgy little house advertised VIP Karaoke with LED-lights and colourful lamps. The road was muddy and frozen, and all was quiet around us. I was thinking: “Where the hell are we…?”.

We went in, and all the walls were black. There were golden glittery decorations and tacky red Chesterfield sofas everywhere. To me, it looked more like a brothel than a karaoke-bar. The place was largely deserted, and we headed for the middle table where her friends were sitting. The table was full of beer mugs, a vodka carafe and some half eaten snacks. In one of the red sofas, there sat another famous human rights activist. I was honoured to meet her, despite the bizarre setting. On the other sofa, with her, singing an old 1990s classic song I do not remember (as I wasn’t entirely sober myself), was MY OLD RUSSIAN TEACHER from fifteen years ago. All of them were way more drunk than us, and the singing was gut-wrenching. Last time I saw my Russian teacher in 2002, I did not expect our next meeting to be in this setting!

We all had a joyful night, I remember singing one Spice Girls song on stage with Aigul. We forgot everything that night, just singing our hearts out. It must have sounded awful. But our friendship started there, and that was how I became embedded in my fieldwork. It was a truly anthropological experience.

I was supposed to be gone for only six months, but I ended up doing fieldwork in all of the Central Asian countries for 377 days. I made it through despite systematic surveillance of me, my contacts and my friends; a massive earthquake; two internships; an intense break up; PhD frustration; crossing a border every two to three weeks; falling in love; visa issues; and many, many interviews and meaningful conversations with professionals and activists in my area.

After this immersion in Central Asia, I realised that Aigul was right about having courage, and this also applied to me. To do this kind of fieldwork, you need to be courageous. To deal with repression, surveillance, even risk seeing your friends go to prison. It was worth every bit.

Now that I know what it takes, I am ready to fight for a positive change in this region, through my research. And it involves a lot of fun, too.

* The name of my interviewee has been changed.

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Mia Tarp Hansen is in political science, in the third year of her PhD on civil society and human rights in Central Asia. 


She has been embedded in the Central Asian region since she was a teenager, and simply never fell out of love with the place. 


Mia has worked, lived, and studied in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, zigzagging the Central Asian region countless times, usually on dodgy types of transport.


Photo sourced from Mia: 
“A photo of me from a wedding that I randomly got invited to while I was living in Tajikistan during my fieldwork. As there had been armed clashes in the capital a few days before, our workplace didn’t recommend us to go – but we ditched the advice and had an awesome (and safe) time with the hospitable hosts. How are you supposed to meet the locals if you isolate yourselves from them?“

The post Karaoke in Kazakhstan (Mia Tarp Hansen) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

I remember when the first posters went up advertising the study tour, “When the levee breaks”. The study tour was for undergraduates, but there were a few spots for graduate researchers.

I was thinking that there was NO WAY I’d be selected to go on the trip of a lifetime to the American South.

But there I was on Monday 6 June 2016, at Melbourne airport (at 6am) feeling very nervous and preparing for the longest flight of my life (Melbourne – Sydney – Dallas – New Orleans)!

With me were thirty undergraduate students, six teaching staff (including another three graduate researchers, like me), and five auditors (who wanted to come along for the ride).

After the three weeks we spent on the road together travelling from New Orleans to Memphis via Natchez, Vicksburg and Clarksdale (and a few more stops in between), we became like family.

This trip of a lifetime did not come for free, though!

As part of the conditions of being funded to go on the tour, the graduate researchers had to put together a research proposal for a project relevant to the study tour, as well as take on a mentoring role with a group of students. The research project did not have to be large (the minimum required output was a journal submission), it did not have to be related to your PhD, nor did it have to involve collecting empirical data.

However, being the crazy person that I am, I did the complete opposite and constructed an elaborate plan to speak with people who have worked in anti-violence against women services, post-Hurricane Katrina, essentially creating a whole new PhD for myself. It has become what I now hope will be the basis of my next research project.

For the first week of the study tour, I ran around the city of New Orleans – a place I was completely unfamiliar with on many different levels – interviewing police officers, sexual assault nurse examiners, counsellors, support workers, advocacy groups, activists, and academics about the issues faced by women who experience violence in New Orleans. Having conducted research in a similar field for my PhD, I felt comfortable undertaking another heavy project.

While I was expecting to hear some things that shocked me, I was not prepared for the depth and complexity of the issues facing women in that part of the world. Fortunately, the people I was working with were very generous in helping me to understand the problems they experience, offering me an amazing insight into their tireless efforts to help bring about change in what I now ‘affectionately’ refer to as “trauma city”.

As we followed “the highway through the cradle of the civil war” (Paul Simon, “Graceland”) towards Memphis and saw the social landscape shift into further decay, it became clear to me how important the work I’d started in New Orleans was beyond the city. I found out from one community support worker that there are no women’s shelters in the Mississippi Delta. The ‘Delta’ is the area that lies between the Mississippi River and the Yazoo River. Violence against women is not very high on the agenda in the American South, especially when it has to compete with racial inequality and the kind of poverty we usually only associate with the developing world.

While what I saw was incredibly confronting, it has only spurred me on to go back!

Not only did the study tour provide me with an opportunity to pursue a new research project, it also enabled me to network with academics from the universities we visited, specifically Tulane University, Mississippi State, and Delta State.

I even (brazenly) approached the director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture about the possibility of doing a post-doc based on the work I had been doing in New Orleans.  He didn’t say “no” outright, so there is some hope that I can return post-PhD, even if it means having to endure the sweltering heat, both physically (it was hot!) and politically.

As well as undertaking the research project, it was amazing to contribute to the students’ learning in such an intense way. The conversations I had with the students demonstrated a deep engagement with the issues present in contemporary American society, but they also highlighted the parallels present in the Australian context – reading global problems through a local lens.

If they run the study tour again, I would highly recommend applying. It truly was the trip of a lifetime, professionally and personally, and I’d like to express my gratitude to the academic staff (Terrie Waddell, Trevor Hogan, and Raul Sanchez-Urribarri) and the three other graduate researchers (Mary Ross-Volk, Carl Dziunka, and Daniel Lopez) for their support, encouragement, and friendship during our time away.

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Rachel Loney-Howes is a fourth year PhD candidate in Crime, Justice and Legal Studies. 


Her PhD is an analysis of the nature, use and scope of online spaces for anti-rape activism, with a critical focus on the politics of recognition. She has presented on this research at conferences and been published in peer-reviewed journals. 


In her spare time, Rachel likes watching the latest Netflix saga, talking social theory (dork!), and going for bike rides in the sunshine. 


She also loves cats. Rachel is on Twitter at @rloneyhowes.

The post When the levee broke – travelling to the American South (Rachel Loney-Howes) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

As a communications lead in the Graduate Research School, I’m often asked to support the recruitment of participants for research projects from within and outside of La Trobe.

With the majority of these requests, what has struck me is that researchers are limiting themselves to email and flyers posted around campuses when there are a wealth of communication channels at their disposal.

Contemporary society equals communication overload. We’re all used to being time poor, and constantly assessing whether the deluge of information coming at us is relevant or of interest.

To have a chance of communicating effectively these days means you need to tell your audience very quickly what it is your message is about. If they’re interested, they’ll be willing to take further action, such as clicking through to a webpage for more information.

If you describe your entire project in a text heavy email, you’ll always run the risk of your audience disengaging before they’ve had a chance to read through the message that you’ve no doubt carefully and painstakingly crafted.

Seek feedback

Our advice to researchers who are planning a research project is to carefully consider the communication channels that can lead to strong participation in their project, but at an early stage: before human ethics approval is sought. It’s important also to acknowledge that our Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC), here at La Trobe, or your own university’s human ethics committee may not agree that your suggested recruitment approach is appropriate to your study.

It’s worthwhile discussing your intentions with your supervisors, peers, and if possible, staff in the human ethics area, to seek their feedback about the most appropriate way to recruit for the type of study you are conducting – well before you actually seek human ethics approval.

Consider all your options

Acknowledging that there are many approaches you can take with recruitment, the following approach is one means to reach out to potential participants using a website, social media and available newsletters. It also applies specifically to La Trobe University staff and graduate researchers, but its principles can be applied to any research project recruitment strategy.

Should it be appropriate to your study, the main thing you need to plan for is getting your project description online. This is a key enabling channel that facilitates communication via social media, newsletters and email – it also makes it easier for your audience to read the information.

Reaching the University community

If you’re seeking participants from within the University community, or from those engaged with us, at La Trobe, we have four main communication channels that we can use to help you get the word out about your project:

• Graduate Research Scholar
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Yammer (staff only)

The audiences of the first three listed channels are La Trobe University graduate research candidates, their supervisors and researchers (especially Early Career Researchers). For Yammer, it’s all La Trobe University staff.

The Graduate Research School manages the channels listed above and can use them to help support your recruitment. To seek our support, we’d suggest you take the following steps:

1. discuss your recruitment approach with your supervisors, peers and if possible human ethics team
2. when applying for ethics approval, outline your recruitment strategy in detail, including all channels you’ll use 
3. if approved, create a webpage that describes your project and tells participants what they need to do to participate
4. provide this information to us, along with information on how participants can contact you
5. at the Graduate Research School will now have what we need to assist you in your recruitment. 

A note about websites

You might think that it’s very difficult and potentially costly to get a website up and running. While this used to be the case, there are a number of free and low-cost web publishing options that provide basic functionality and easy-to-use interfaces. Our recommendations are Weebly or WordPress. You may also consider using the Google Docs platform. Google Docs provides an easy and free way to share information, and La Trobe staff and graduate researchers could also consider using a Qualtrics page to describe their project.

Update 29 June: La Trobe staff and graduate researchers should also be aware of the La Trobe website policies and procedures when considering publishing information outside the official La Trobe web environment.

Thanks to Sara Paradowski, La Trobe’s Senior Human Ethics Officer for her advice with this article. 

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Jason Murphy is Senior Research Communications Advisor at the Graduate Research School (GRS).

Jason’s role in the GRS involves communicating to La Trobe’s research community of graduate researchers and their supervisors. He produces content and helps to manage the GRS website, social media presence, newsletters and print-based media.

When he’s not working full time, he’s working on his own PhD project which critically examines the role of marketing in contemporary society.

The post Planning for recruitment before your ethics application (Jason Murphy) appeared first on Research Education and Development.

This interview with Dr Emma Sherry shows that sport research is about more than just the sport!

Emma’s research is a great example of engaged, sustained academic work that has outcomes directly applicable to improving various developing communities’ quality of life.

As an added bonus, she sounds like she has a great time doing it all!


1. How did you end up researching in the field you’re in?

After I submitted my PhD in sport governance, I was worried that I would fall in a post-submission heap so gave myself a little project to do to keep me busy.

The project involved looking at the Australian team attending the Homeless World Cup. I stumbled upon the Homeless World Cup via The Big Issue, the street magazine and social enterprise, which really appealed to my inner ‘bleeding heart Leftie with a long family history of social justice’.

Back then, I was really drawn to the relatively new idea that sport could be used for something bigger, a mechanism for community development and social change.

I think the lesson that I learned from my change in focus is how important a real passion for your field or area of study is to a successful academic career. I truly hope that my research can contribute to making communities happier, healthier and more inclusive.

Since that ‘little project’, I have now developed my career in the field of sport for development with a variety of programs in Australia and in the Pacific, investigating how sport can be used as a tool for social change and community development in a whole range of different settings.

For those of you interested, I still teach sport governance and I’m a Director on two state level sport boards, but this is no longer an area that I actively research!

2. What aspect of research do you enjoy the most?

I feel very privileged to work in the field of sport for development. I get to work with people and programs who use sport and physical activities to make their communities a better place, with outcomes focusing on education, health, gender quality, social cohesion and more.

I have also had the pleasure to work recently with the National Rugby League (NRL) and Netball Australia in the Pacific, so got to travel to some remote and exotic locations such as Papua New Guinea, Tonga and Samoa!

3. Do you ever have topic envy? If so, what research topic do you fantasise about?

I am lucky in that I often get to do a variety of different projects under the broad ‘sport for development’ discipline, so I get a lot of cool experiences.

In the past 12 months, I have flown over 100,000 kms and spent time in amazingly diverse nations. I got to meet some exceptional people. One of the research highlights has been working with passionate people – passionate about their sport and how they can leverage their sport to achieve health and leadership outcomes for their communities.

A terrific example is speaking to women in Tonga and Samoa about the real impacts that the broader participation in netball programs is having on their individual health, the health of their families, and providing them with leadership opportunities in their villages and countries. These women are formidable and inspiring and it’s an absolute honour to record their journey through the life of the project. I must also admit that non-research highlights last year included drinking fresh coconuts and the life-changing opportunity to swim with a pair of humpback whales.

I have to admit, though, that I’m more than a little envious of my colleagues who research wine tourism in Bordeaux!

4. What’s the best research moment you’ve had?

Sport research is full of very fun moments. During data collection, I often get to be an active observer in the programs, including playing rugby league with little kids in the Papua New Guinea highlands recently. That was a pretty special moment!

But I think the best instances are those where you make a real and authentic connection with your research participants, and have the privilege of sharing and holding their stories.

5. If you were a graduate researcher again, what would you do differently?

I’d probably pick a different topic!

6. Do you have any advice to offer on scholarly collaboration and networking?

Go to things!

Not all of the things, but opportunities for professional development and conferences are a great way to find like-minded people to work with in the future.  One of the key things to a successful academic career is finding your ‘tribe’.

I also recommend sending an email to an author whose work you have loved – let them know! This career is often lonely and isolated, so make a point of reaching out in person or electronically. Twitter, for example, is great to develop a virtual community all over the world!

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Dr Emma Sherry is a Senior Lecturer in the La Trobe University Centre for Sport and Social Impact. She specialises in the area of sport development. Emma holds a PhD from Deakin University. Emma’s doctoral studies investigated conflict of interest in the Australian Football League.

Emma’s current research interests include community development through sport activities, undertaking a broad range of research projects with national and regional sport organisations in Australia and Oceania, including Netball Australia, National Rugby League, Australian Football League, Tennis Australia and Hockey Victoria. Other recent research has included access and equity in sport participation, sport in correctional facilities, and sport and recreation for at-risk and marginalised communities.

Emma is co-editor for the Journal of Sport for Development and is on the editorial board of Communications and Sport Journal. Outside of her academic career, Emma has worked in roles in the area of sport facility and event management and recreation management within the local government and university sport sectors.

The post INTERVIEW with Dr Emma Sherry (Centre for Sport and Social Impact) appeared first on Research Education and Development.