All posts by Siobhan

Welcome back!

So, we had a major pause and rethink on how to deliver on this project due to Covid-19. Dan in the archive has done some work on changing the last focus group into a one to one interview protocol, so that we can still get the rich data we require, but in the safest way possible. I have just started re-organising my workload and outstanding pieces of work, and had a meeting already with Dan about the project. I am really excited we can continue with this piece of work! So, this week we are promoting our conference. Dan has sent over the publicity and I have started promoting to outside networks. I am starting now to really think about how the material we gather can inform our good practice guide. Time to start the research! 

Promoting the focus groups!

On the 20th January, the whole team met to discuss the project aims and to decide on the conference date, speakers, materials and focus groups. We decided to hold the conference on 4th June, and have created a call for contributors, rather than a call for papers. We are doing this so that it opens up the type of professionals who may want to come and attend, so that we get a mix of archivists, academics and those interested in archival collections which are radical. The call has gone out on social media, and we have several new twitter followers because of this, which demonstrates we are reaching a larger audience. We are working on the leaflets for the two focus groups now, and we are expecting those to be on the 4th and 18th March. Once the leaflets are finalised, we will promote them to students and use our community connection via NREC to promote to the community. An exciting potential new collaboration may have come out of one of our new connections too, so this is shaping up to be an excellent project with new engagement…

Focus on the literature…

So today we are back researching after the Christmas vacation, and we are catching up with our project. Dan and I have taken a look at the evaluation forms we have previously used for archival projects. We recognise that we will need to revise these for both of our focus group interviews to get the best out of them. I will be meeting NREC (Northamptonshire Rights and Equalities Council) tomorrow, to discuss with them potential advertising for participants for the community focus group, drawn from their contacts with the community. We have also completed some planning on the focus groups and the conference. 

The rest of today has been conducting literature searches, looking at radical archive collections, BAME engagement and radical pedagogies. This literature gathering is to support the work to produce our best practice guide, which will be produced after the conference. We have also planned in a meeting with all the project group, to discuss the focus groups, teaching and teaching boxes from the archive and the conference overview for next week. 

Watch and wait…

Today has been an interesting day so far. Dan and I have been discussing and researching for our conference, which is part of this bid.  Our conference objective is to explore how other universities use Radical Collections. Through this, we will use the conference to inform the creation of a Best Practice Guide.  We have been researching suitable keynote speakers, and have come up with several across academic and work-related fields. We are considering two speakers, one from academia for the morning sessions, and one more practice based for the afternoon. In this way, we get the best of both worlds, so to speak. We have several excellent people to now contact.

Dan has also been working on the evaluation forms for the project. The evaluation forms serve two purposes. Firstly, we want to utilise them with existing student cohorts to find out their opinions using radical collections. This research is moving us on from our previous research held at Park campus. This research is also specifically targeting radical collections, and by gaining data, we wish to draw deeper conclusions from this. I have been researching radical archives, radical pedagogies across several themes, in order to provide a sound academic basis for our research.  So far, there is quite a lot of information found using radical teaching practices, so this work is ongoing.

Later in the week, I will also be chasing up last week’s emails to the faculties to see who engages with radical archives. This is important work, as it will be used as a basis for our radical database.

The project begins!

Good afternoon, I am Siobhan, the research assistant for the Searchlight Archive. I am very excited to be working on this project, which is to explore the impact of our teaching using radical and extreme collections upon BAME students. We want to find out whether teaching this material impacts upon module engagement and could therefore impact attainment. 

We recently came back from a conference at De Montfort University, presenting our work on radical pedagogies. Our work was praised as innovative and has spurred us on to research and showcase our radical collections. We are in a privileged position to hold a large and ever growing radical collection here at UoN, and it is important to share it as much as possible.  We do not take radical collections lightly, as they can cause harm if not framed appropriately. Dan and I manage these risks often, with outreach, conference papers and engagement, so will therefore keep this to the front of our planning. 

To kick start the project, Dan and I have been project planning. We have been working out key deadlines, and the setting up of focus groups for students and the community to input into our research. Our focus group work will begin in the next semester, as the rest of this semester will be working on finding out who already engages with radical collections, and creating a database of the findings. We will update the progress with this task in the next blog.