Tutorial with Jill

We discussed how my literature review was coming on.  Jill was ok with the 4 main articles I had chosen, but explained that during the 2000 word review I would end up referring to probably 40 articles.  I'm having a good time reading around Nancy Hartsock, Donna Haraway, Sandra Harding, Carol Gilligan.  I was reading Situated Knowledge by Donna Haraway on the train.

Literature Review purpose:  to read, digest, and summarise.  Not to come up with any conclusions of my own yet).  This forms the basis of the MRes report, but will be expanded over the next 2 years.

Grounded theory - start with information gathering and having one's own suspicions/line of enquiry.

Information and suspicions/enquiry

leads to data gathering by

Research and reading
Interviews with candidates
Archive searches

Review all the above

Which helps formulate Clear Questions

Which returns to the beginning of the loop - informed literature search.

Look at Donald Schon - the Reflective Practitioner
Merlaut-Ponty - Phenomonology
Julia Negus on FB
Madeline Atkins.

I showed Jill the format of my note taking (hard copy) and she thought this was well thought through.  The notes will end up in secure digital format, but I want the hard copy for back up.  She said I needed to keep my research private until my MRes was completed, so I might need to take my blog off my website.

I also showed Jill some of my artwork from my recent classes.  I'm linking the techniques of art (cutting) with Aunt Joan's key skills (dressmaking, glovemaking, flower arranging) by cutting into paper, and making Linocuts.  I've mastered taking photos on my new iPhone which is useful during the tute, but I've not yet mastered where the images are stored, or how to upload them to this blog.  (Another learning need!)

I'm going to be in Coventry all next week - despite my mess up on booking the Research Week seminars, I've been allocated a place on every seminar because others have dropped out.

After the tutorial, I went home via the London Transport Museum and looked at the Poster Girls exhibition.    Very interesting.  In the 1920s and 1930s, Frank Pick was a forward thinking company chairman who was way ahead of his time - he employed women artists alongside male artists to create posters to drive demand for train services, by advertising services to the leisure market so trains were used in the off peak (nothing changes - LUL only advertises off peak services to this day as the system is at capacity in the peak).  Interesting facts included women being commissioned to create posters for sporting events (for men), and not being limited to posters of flowers (women used to be restricted to drawing flowers).  The exhibition noted that women were paid less than men for the same work.  Lovely posters and an enjoyable exhibition.