This little essay has been languishing on my hard drive for a while; this seems like a better place to store it. A quick reminder too that I only send out one post via email each week, in a bid to avoid clogging anyone’s inbox—six additional posts from the week can be found here.
I have been trying out a guiding maxim: Work with others whenever possible, especially when collaborations come about organically. This started as a loose research strategy, after I had had a gut full of solo work finishing my PhD—I missed being around people; especially the interested-chatting aspect. By organic I mean that feeling you get when you realise you’ve been chatting for three hours about some issue and you’re already looking forward to the next such conversation—usually these kinds of meetings lead to some mutual sentiment of ‘we should talk again’, and eventually, ‘we better write one of this down!’
I’m reminded of Neil Gaiman’s quoting of George R. R. Martin’s (who may have quoted someone else) impression of writers as falling into two camps: architects and gardeners. Allowing for the moment that writing and research have enough in common for the analogy to hold, I think it is reasonable to argue that lot of research is akin to architecture; things are, in general and for good reason, carefully designed—when some unforeseen issue disturbs the plan an alternative is engineered. This analogy can extend into other parts of research as well though, and I am pointing here mainly to the composition of research teams. In this respect, the architectural approach is one involving a clear division of roles and, often, some sort of hierarchy (e.g. project leaders, collaborating researchers, assistants). The reasons for this social structuring seem closely intwined with the broader context of research activity, and in particular, its institutional nature.
I have found that I prefer the gardening approach. The kinds of collaborations I’m talking about here are not generally the product of fixed infrastructure, in the sense of committed grant monies or other formal schemes that set up guide rails around the project (including stipulations about its outcomes).
It is worth noting that architecture and gardening are heuristic concepts. I’ve identified the distinction because it has seemed useful in my own thinking, not because one is more objectively useful than the other. A point worth noting is that these approaches don’t really exist in the dichotomous ways I’ve alluded to—the gardeners have to architectural sometimes (especially if they want to be published), and vice versa.
My reasons for preferring the gardening approach include some of the following. First, I fundamentally enjoy and get motivation from working with others. Second, my own knowledge is far extended when I collaborate with somebody who has knowledge of things that I don’t. Third, the results take me into areas I might never have explored on my own, and generate problem conceptualisations that I might never have stumbled upon.
I can imagine some well-founded critiques that might be levelled at this kind of philosophy. One concern might be for the legitimacy of the problems themselves—this approach involves a mutual exploration of ‘interesting stuff’, usually leading to the sentiment of ‘we should write about this!’ The ensuing writing project often serves as an anchor point for research. This means that problems are generated on the basis of the researchers’ extant knowledges, rather than through traditionally experimental means. I don’t think this is particularly controversial, given that the collaborators often hold scholarly expertise certified through PhD awards, but it does mean that the problems that surface as candidates for exploration aren’t really generated in an analytical way (at least initially).
If we wanted to be particularly knowledg-ey about it we could think of the personal approach (that is, gardening) as some sort of epistemic experiment. These collaborations usually deal in some respect with things that have a relatively objective existence out there in the world. This, it seems to me, the main difference between research collaboration as I’m attempting to understand it here, and the more colloquial activity of hanging out.
The process is first and foremost dialogic. Sitting and talking a lot from a place of intrinsic motivation is a core part of the process. Over time, this seems to produce a very different kind of artefact to the architectural approach; it isn’t really clear at the end who wrote which bit, and most of the work is done synchronously, in real time, together. In fact, synchronous communication seems particularly important to the business of actually ‘doing’ the research. This can be exhausting at times (I have twice recently partaken in Zoom sessions lasting more than 7 hours), but it is rarely boring, and seems to lead pretty consistently to a flow state. Cycles of synchronous discussion complemented with periods of marination seem mutually compatible.
I have a number of questions about the process that I don’t fully understand. Is there an ideal number of collaborators? Most of my work to date has involved duets or trios. In line with the gardening metaphor, is this kind of work seasonal? Just as agriculture is generally not an immediate-reward proposition, it seems like a long-term approach to production of work; quick turnarounds of work are not usually possible, or perhaps even desirable. How many projects can be logically balanced at one time? My calendar includes appointments stretching months into the future, and setting the next meeting has become a practice in and of itself. There seems to be some benefit to having multiple projects unfolding slowly over time, in the sense that this process affords some time for the epistemic soup to simmer, and sometimes interesting threads materialise between projects.