Changing Academic Life

This is a replay of a 2018 conversation with Professor James Wilsdon when he was a Professor of Research Policy in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield in the UK. He is now at UCL as a Professor of Research Policy in the Dept for Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP). James has been involved in many policy and think tank initiatives. Of particular interest here, he chaired an independent review of the role of metrics in the management of the UK’s research system, publishing a final report in 2015 called The Metric Tide. Connecting to our recent episodes on review practices, we start here at about 19mins into the original recording exploring what is the purpose of research evaluation.

“Metrics are a technology and there is nothing intrinsically good or evil in them, it’s all about how they are used.”

“It is incumbent on us not to indulge processes of evaluation that we know empirically are bad science.”

Full Transcript available here.

Original Feb 2018 podcast with James Wilsdon on impacts, responsible metric & evaluation practices

Aricles about James’ move to UCL:

UCL https://www.ucl.ac.uk/steapp/news/2022/dec/metrics-metascience-and-now-ucl-steapp-welcomes-james-wilsdon

Research on Research Institute (RoRI): https://researchonresearch.org/tpost/6283xjy2y1-roris-director-moves-to-ucl - includes links to more recent responsible research evaluation reports James has been involved in.

UK research funding councils – Higher Education Funding Council - http://www.hefce.ac.uk

Research Excellence Framework (REF) - http://www.ref.ac.uk/2014/

The Metric Tide report – https://responsiblemetrics.org/the-metric-tide/

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment - http://www.ascb.org/dora/

Leiden Manifesto for Research Metrics - http://www.leidenmanifesto.org

This conversation continues the reflections on our peer reviewing practices, this time bringing in the experiences of someone from the Global South. Here I am speaking with Prof Heike Winschiers-Theophilus. Heike is a Professor in the Faculty of Computing & Informatics, at Namibia University of Science & Technology. Heike shares the many challenges she and her colleagues have faced in the form of reviewer assumptions and biases, often informed from a Global North mindset as the default ‘mainstream’ gold standard.  She also talks about the challenges in getting their research to be equally valued in making contributions to knowledge creation, and not just accepting their projected positions as exotic others and mere users of knowledge. This is also exacerbated by the exclusionary implications of open access for them, and the difficulties in getting their work more internationally visible and cited.

“At times I don’t understand what is happening in the Global North. I don’t understand the issues and conversations.”

“How much context must we give so we can override assumptions?”

“You are exotic therefore your value comes through being different. But that’s not the case.”

“It’s still keeping the ‘mainstream’ as the goalposts but that’s not what diversity is supposed to be like. We are equivalent to any other”

“Reviewers explicitly write that actually: ‘we understand there should be diversity but you don’t compare to mainstream’”

“I don’t think people can imagine we do serious research here.”

“Do they [reviewers] really read our study, do they even look at the academic value of it. Or is it becoming a political discussion now.”

“We should remember our own western bias. But reviewers keep on forgetting that. Because now they are in this power position.”

“Context and assumptions … when I write I have to think, who can be the reviewer and how much must I write to convince the reviewer…to override whatever assumptions the person has. And it becomes really complicated.”

“We are no longer part of the whole knowledge creation process. [… Open access] is totally counterproductive for us. And that’s scary.”

0:05 Welcome to Changing Academic Life.

0:30 Intro to the episode

03:17 Welcome

Heike introduces herself, how she came to Namibia, the challenges doing a PhD, and now working as a professor in Namibia and integrating issues around linguistics, AI and culture

 09:40  Ways she experiences some of the cultural tensions giving example of developing software and the participatory design techniques that didn’t work in this context, leading to shift in research focus onto methodologies and indigenous knowledge.

…The importance of asking questions

14:42 Being fully immersed in Namibia and now not understand the issues and conversations in the Global North and how this makes communication about what she does here harder and harder.

15:57 Example of these issues are important in the Global North but not important for her – the difference between learned or abstract empathy but not lived. Tolerance as an example. Diversity and inclusion also. The dissonance between behaviour and abstract discussions.

18:27 How this plays out in the review process. Heike goes through some of their recent review experiences – illustrating a lot of assumptions e.g., issues around diversity, different expectations about the value they ‘should’ deliver being ‘exotic’

22:27 Keeping the [WEIRD] ‘mainstream’ as the goalposts and reviewers expecting them to compare to the ‘mainstream’ despite espousing diversity as a principle. Yet WEIRD is not even the majority on the planet.

25:07 Anchored in views, eg from media, that Africa cannot be progressive or come up with innovations.

26:25 And opinions being even worse than biased assumptions, being called colonisers which is really insulting, and the new form of apartheid ‘you are not allowed to use VR’

Telling the story of one particular paper and conference review experience

32:38 The power of the reviewers and in particular the 2AC, and the gamble of whether the 2AC likes it or not

34:15 The impact of these sorts of reviews on the people involved

36:49 The question of who can be their audience and who not, trying to anticipate and mitigate reviewer assumptions and bias, and the problems of anonymity for them

41”10 The challenges of visibility and getting cited, and the exclusive consequences of open access publishing when they don’t have national agreements or access to funds to pay to publish a paper, and are relegated to users not creators of knowledge.

45:09 Discussing different open access or publication models, and also the similar challenges of costs for conferences and what is missed there by not going

50:14 Pluraversality as an alternative for looking at different perspectives and that all fit… and also complicated to operationalize as an abstract concept

54:00 How to change our fundamental underlying perspectives – encouraging people to experience, come to Africa, see that there is real research happening, and more collaborations

58:06 It’s about individuals, the power is with the 1AC and 2AC, that we carefully choose our ACs and needing mentorship for ACs

1:01:49 And the extra challenges for people in the Global South who don’t have Heike’s experience; and the importance of national gatherings and the challenges getting these recognised

1:06:14 Wrapping up

1:07:36 My final reflections

1:09:53 End

Related links:

[Abbreviations; Acronyms]

PD: Participatory Design

CHI: Computer Human Interaction

1AC/2AC: Associate Chair roles in our SIGHI conference program committees, responsible for managing the reviews for a set of papers

VR: Virtual Reality

WEIRD people: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic

ACM: Association of Computing Machinery, a professional organisation

ACM SIGCHI: Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction https://sigchi.org

GIZ: the main German development agency, "Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit"

[People]

Prof Christiane Floyd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiane_Floyd

Stanley

[Misc]

SIGCHI Ethics Committee: https://sigchi.org/ethics/

SIGCHI Gary Marsden Travel Awards: https://sigchi.org/awards/gary-marsden-travel-awards/

[Book]

Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, 2018, Duke University Press

[Heike’s publications if you want to check them out]

In the last episode from my own reviewing hall of shame, I mentioned the coincidence of attending a webinar where Edward Lee talked about the ‘toxic culture of rejection’, based on a blog post he write in 2022. In this episode we hear from Edward directly and discuss the culture of rejection, in CS especially, the problems with peer reviewing, the nature of conferences, and how we might approach reviewing differently and start to change the culture around publications, acceptance rates and evaluations without losing quality standards.

His bio: Edward A. Lee has been working on embedded software systems for more than 40 years. After studying and working at Yale, MIT, and Bell Labs, he landed at Berkeley, where he is now Professor of the Graduate School in EECS. His research is focused on cyber-physical systems. He leads the open-source software project Lingua Franca and previously Ptolemy II, is a coauthor of textbooks on embedded systems, signals and systems, digital communications, and philosophical and social implications of technology. His current research is focused on a polyglot coordination language for distributed real-time systems called Lingua Franca that combines features of discrete-event modeling, synchronous languages, and actors.

“There's a classical view of the purpose of publication, which is essentially to add knowledge to the archive […] I feel…we should understand that the primary purpose of publication is to communicate with other humans.”

“A scientific discipline progresses in a very cultural way… it's really about a human culture of developing and evolving, and, and it tends to evolve in a very chaotic way.”

“Institutions should be prepared to do their own evaluation.”

“The criterion should be, what is informative, interesting, and potentially valuable and useful to the community.”

“Everyone involved in the [review] process knows that we're dealing with other human beings. And the phrase that I've tried to use, […]  is to pretend that this paper was written by their sister. How would that change [how you assess the paper]?”  

 0:05 Welcome to Changing Academic Life.

0:30 Intro to the episode

03:03 Welcome Edward Lee starts to introduce himself

06:04 How the faculty position selection process has changed over time  - hypercompetition.

07:31 The gradual change towards hypercompetition, the randomness of the review process and the role of luck in getting papers accepted

11:41 The problem of the conference peer review process in no real opportunity for dialogue compared to journal review processes

12:38 This has the effect of a certain amount of randomness and conservatism.

14:44 What are conferences for? The importance of informal communication orthogonal to the  publications

17:02 The obsessive focus on novelty

18:25 The purpose of publication, how science progresses and the importance of dialogue and culture.

22:59 The challenge of publishing multidisciplinary and systems papers

26:44 Playing the game the right way

31:17 The randomness of reviews and factors around this in program committees

37:30 The  tensions and conflicts of  selective conferences for rankings

38:07 Learning from how other communities work re conferences and journals

40:21 The association of publications with funding to attend a conference

44:23 Institutions should be prepared to do their own evaluations not outsource them to reviewers

47:55 What we should be looking for when evaluating papers

51:16 The advantages and challenges of the double blind review process

55:38 Reminder that we are dealing with humans as reviewers

59:35 Arguing for getting rid of acceptance rate

01:04:25 Wrapping up

[Blog post] Edward A. Lee, The Toxic Culture of Rejection in Computer Science, 22 Aug 2022, SIGBED https://sigbed.org/2022/08/22/the-toxic-culture-of-rejection-in-computer-science/

[Newsletter article – interview] Anna Kramer, How I decided to call out the ‘toxic’ culture’ of CS, 7 Sept 2022, Protocol.  https://www.protocol.com/workplace/how-i-decided-edward-lee

Note: we talk about blind reviewing at some point. While this has  been the standard terminology used for a long time about our anonymous review processes, I appreciate that this terminology can be experienced as ableist and perpetuating harmful stereotypes. See the following blog post:

[Blog article] Rachel Ades, An end to “Blind Review”, 20 Feb 2020, APA Online. https://blog.apaonline.org/2020/02/20/an-end-to-blind-review/

Edward Lee photo: Photo credit by Rusi Mchedlishvili 

This short reflection follows on from the last episode, a replay of my 2017 conversation with Gloria Mark in honour of her just having published her book called “Attention span: a groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness and productivity”. I make a confession here that comes from my reviewing hall of shame, about when I was a reviewer of one of the key papers leading to this book, a paper authored by Victor González and Gloria Mark. And how I (very wrongly!) argued for rejection. Luckily good colleagues saved me from myself and the paper was accepted but I use this as an example to urge us all to be more reflective about the biases we bring to reviewing and position this also against the broader challenges around reviewing in our increasingly hypercompetitive publication culture. I share this story with Victor González and Gloria Mark’s permission.

Full transcript pdf for download

0:05 Introduction to changing academic life.

1:31Introduction of the story – paper related to Gloria’s new bo

3:07 Rigorous fieldwork and data collection by Victor Gonzalez.

5:07 Arguing for rejection, discussing the paper in the corridor.

7:15 Judging a paper on its merits.

9:07 The coincidence of other conversations about reviewing eg Life in Academia Seminar

11:11 Review bias eg quantitative vs qualitative research, and Big Q vs little Q qualitative research.

13:27 The broader critiques of the review process.

15:57 Unsustainability of review effort - CHI 2023 example.

17:19 The need to radically rethink peer-review and publication practices.

19:45  End

Victor González, Sperientia

Gloria Mark, UC Irvine and the replay of the interview with Gloria

[Their paper] Victor M. González and Gloria Mark. 2004. "Constant, constant, multi-tasking craziness": managing multiple working spheres. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '04). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 113–120. https://doi.org/10.1145/985692.985707

[Academic paper] Aczel, B., Szaszi, B. & Holcombe, A.O. A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review. Res Integr Peer Rev 6, 14 (2021).

[Academic paper] Moore, S., Neylon, C., Paul Eve, M. et al. “Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence. Palgrave Commun 3, 16105 (2017).

[Academic paper] Park, M, et al, Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time. Nature 613, 138–144 (2023)

[Twitter thread - pointers to academic papers/books] Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke - twitter thread on their Big Q little q distinctions in qualitative research with links to relevant papers

[Webinar] Life in Academia webinar by Edward Lee 24.1.2023: Toxic culture of rejection

[Blog article] Edward Lee The toxic culture of rejection in computer science. 22 Aug 2022

[Blog article] Nesta, Reducing bias in funding decisions (“Nesta The UK's innovation agency for social good”)

COARA: Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment

DORA: The Declaration on Research Assessment

Thanks to Sabrina Burtscher for cleaning up the otter.ai transcript.

Gloria Mark is a Chancellor’s Professor in the Department of Informatics at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at University of California Irvine. This is a replay of our conversation in 2017 in honour of her having just published her book called ‘Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity’ which is being touted as the ‘must-read book for January’ and receiving a lot of enthusiastic media and podcast attention.

In this conversation from 2017, you’ll hear Gloria talk about her experiences as chair of a major conference, how she moved from a Fine Arts background, painting murals on buildings, to a PhD in cognitive science and to studying the relationship between media use, attention and stress. I’m re-playing this as I think it will be interesting to see how this work put her on the path to her current book and inspire people to similarly think about how they can amplify the impact of their academic outputs.

Full transcript to download

0:05 Introduction to this episode.

5:31 How Gloria has grown in(to) the role of conference chair.

12:33 How the alternative of painting in a studio (when murals would be no option any more) was not a good fit.

13:41 From Arts to Biostatistics to Psychology: about being open-minded and taking risks.

26:03 About the patterns that can be seen in studying us multitaskers.

31:53 How digital media intensifies our multitasking and shifts attention.

36:08 Rewards and gratifications that people get with email, and how this makes breaking bad habits hard.

39:25 The importance of having a macro-level strategy.

43:11 How Gloria looks after herself and tries to alleviate stress.

53:29 End

Gloria Mark - home page

Book: Gloria Mark, 2023,  “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity”

Austen Rainer and I love co-facilitating academic leadership development courses for Informatics Europe and sharing experiences with so many people who share a commitment to doing academia differently. In this conversation we reflect on how these courses came about and experiences running them so far. We also try to unpack the similarities and differences between the online and residential versions of the course as well as the broad topic areas we cover. Join us in being part of changing academic cultures through good leadership practices.

[A leader is] “anyone who holds themselves accountable for developing the potential in others” Lucy Ryan, Lunchtime Learning for Leaders p.3

“A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognising the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential” Brené Brown

“... collectively trying to change academic cultures for the better through positive constructive leadership practices, and bringing out the best in people.” Geri

“I find it such a rewarding course to be involved in, how much I learn from everybody that participates,...and certainly that's the feedback we get, how beneficial the course is to help people in the kind of development... of leadership in academia.” Austen

0:05 Welcome to Changing Academic Life.

5:58 Dagstuhl 2019 and the first meeting.

10:26 What made you want to do the master’s degree?

16:42 What is the value of co-facilitation?

20:05 How would you define leadership within the academic context?

25:20 Giving people permission to pursue something.

33:09 The importance of self-reflection and ongoing learning.

40:38 Differences between online courses vs. residential courses.

44:16 Broad topic areas of the courses

48:46 Invitation to join the next courses -online starting in Spring 2023 and the residential in June 2023

 50:40 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation.

Informatics Europe Leadership Courses - overview page - with links to next course offerings (special rates for people from IE member institutions)

• Online Academic Leadership Development course Spring 2023 - early bird reg 31 Jan, registration open until 17 Feb.
• Residential Academic Leadership Development course June 2023 - early bird reg 28 April

Informatics Europe - IE home page - encourage your institution to become members if they are not already

Lucy Ryan, https://www.lucyryan.co.uk, Book: Lunchtime Learning for Leaders

Brené Brown, https://brenebrown.com, Book: Dare to Lead

An earlier podcast conversation with Austen Rainer (Queens Uni, Belfast) about his career path - changing cultures, leading people, values

Maria Angela Ferrario, Queens Belfast  

Gregor Engels, Paderborn Uni & Informatics Europe

ECSS2018 Deans Workshop

ECSS2019 Leaders Workshop

Dagstuhl Seminar ‘Values in Computing’, July 2019 

Ben Zander ‘Mistakes: how fascinating’

VIA Character strengths

In this short podcast [19:16 mins], I reflect on some of the themes from across the podcast discussions since Sept 2022 - themes around listening, leadership and stepping up to make a difference. I also conclude with a call to take some time now to reflect on and savour your 2022 and to think of your theme for 2023.

00:05 Welcome to changing academic life. I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a podcast series where academics and others share their stories, provide ideas and provoke discussions about what we can do it individually and collectively to change academic life for the better.

00:30 As 2022 draws to an end, I thought it would be useful just to step back and reflect on the different themes and the conversations we've heard in this series. So far. As I shared in the first short podcast in September 1, actually, this year, it's been a bit of a strange year, I think still trying to reconnect and get reestablished or to find new ways of being and working, and living and then in, in the ongoing situations that we're dealing with worldwide. So the podcast series only really started up again in September. And I think across the conversations that we've had, so far, there's some really interesting common themes around the power of good listening, the different ways of doing leadership and being leader, and how any of us can step up and be part of making a difference.

01:27 So we started off this series, listening to Oscar Trimboli, who's who's an expert on listening, and whose mission is to create 100 million deep listeners in the world. So he's not an academic, per se, but does draw on a lot of research based work to promote different ways of listening well. And just as a little sidebar, I was talking about this in a workshop, we're running around mentoring and mentioning about deep listening. And someone just had a little chuckle, because talking to a group of computer scientists, deep listening is DL, which is deep learning, you know, so that you can think of it as DL. But what I think Oscar really was good at just drawing attention to was the importance of just how we're present with people. And the importance of really listening deeply, so that we can also then ask great questions that aren't for our own understanding, but helping other people better understand and develop. And he also talked about or unpacked for us five different levels of listening. So different ways that we can really listen.

02:39 He also talked about us needing to communicate more in how we communicate. So for me, I think that thing of being really present with people and trying to listen well, and being more explicit in how we're communicating is a useful thing to pick up. And, and interestingly, that was something that Julie Kientz mentioned in her discussion as well about taking on a head of department role, where she talks about needing to be very explicit with people that she was working with, especially some of her students and that which hat she was wearing, or which hat they wanted her to wear an interaction. So I think that's a nice example of communicating how we communicate.

03:28 We also then, after Oscar heard from four different people, Julie Kientz, who stepped up and took on a head of department role, Darragh McCashin, who stepped up and was part of creating a COST network on how to promote better mental health amongst researchers. We had Stuart Reeves, who stepped up to become part of the University Senate as a way of trying to affect change in his local institution. And we had Aisling O'Kane who stepped up as a as an interim department head as well. And what I think is interesting about all of these people, you know, Aisling talks to talked about the fact that she wasn't, she always sort of associated these roles with the grey hairs, the lots of experience, and all of these people are relatively young, career wise. And yet all of them demonstrated that it is possible if we see something that needs to be done that we can step up and do it and we don't need to be senior.

04:44 So, you know, Darragh was talking about the, the stepping up and setting out sort of working with others on mental health initiatives as part of the cost network and touching upon issues of imposter. And for me the discussions of impostor wasn't just about the fact that it's dealing with impostor, which is perhaps a common experience that many of us share. But again, that that thread of the value of listening to each other, of sharing our own stories and hearing that we're not alone in dealing with these issues, and, and the power of that, and a lot of the interventions and events that they've held, we had Stuart who's talking about slow heart change working from the inside of institutions. And that the, you know, what must be frustrating at times, just because of how slow these institutions are to change. But if we want to see change, we've got to be part of it. And the way that he's learning to work within the bureaucratic structures of the University Senate to try to affect change, and to try to bring in the voices of other people that he works with. And so again, that theme of listening to what the other voices and concerns are, so that he could properly represent them.

06:17 And then Julie and Aisling, both taking on heads of department role, and dealing with the challenges of shifting from being appear to stepping into a different sort of role. And so there are a couple of interesting things, I think I heard across their discussions as well. And that is that there's no ideal way of doing leadership. You know, as we said, you don't have to be the grey experienced person, grey haired, experienced person. And what I liked about both of the ways that they navigated through their, their stepping into these roles was the way that they connected to what their own strengths were, and defining a modality of leadership that reflected who they were. So for Julie, that was really tapping into her strength around being a mentor and her love of mentoring, and how she could reinterpret that within a wider faculty context. And for Aisling, it was very much around how to bring forward those strengths that she brings into the research around engaging multiple voices and participatory design co design sort of processes, and how to bring similar participatory decision making to the faculty.

07:38 And it's interesting the both of them in different ways, talked about being reluctant sort of authority figures, and somehow having uneasy relationships to power because of the relative youth and having stepped from peer into leadership. And I think, both and in fact, all of them demonstrate really interesting examples of a way of exercising power that's around power with. And this goes back to some work of Mary Parker Follett, who studied organisations back in the 1940s, who first wrote about these notions of power over versus power with, and that's since been developed by lots of different authors to also include power to. So power over is often associated with the more grey had experienced, like it's the asymmetrical power relationships, it's very hierarchical command and control, the power to reflects that sense of the ability of the leader to have some influence. And this is an interesting concept. The power to because it can be it can play out in relation to power, I have the power to have power over. But it can also be, I have the power to help other people find their power.

09:03 And that points to more of the power with and that's how you that the ability of the leader to actively promote people to work together to act together and to empower them to be part of decision making. And I think all of them have talked about different ways of engaging with people that really illustrate specific examples of power with Julie talked about the importance of being open and communicative and doing it in a timely way. And, you know, and also recognising the power to because she also talked about in your recognising that when you're in a position of leadership, and you see something some situation or some that needs dealing with or some people come to you with some concerns you actually have power to do something about it. And Aisling similarly talked about, one of the motivations for her stepping into the department head role was seeing that there were changes that were needed because of the rapid recent growth of the department and the current challenges of the context that we're in. And recognising that there was something she could do about it and wanting to make a difference.

10:27 Now, we also saw different people talk about the different trade offs and costs of doing this. So there, I think it's worth pointing out that there are trade offs and costs in not doing anything, which is the status quo, or other people exercising power, taking things in directions that you may not want to see things go in. Some of the costs were around research time. And yeah, the amount of time to really sort of focus on that. They're also impacts on family life as well, in some ways. And again, they have different ways of navigating and negotiating this.

11:07 Some other themes that I think we've seen is around the permission, that to give ourselves not to be perfect, to learn, to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. As Julie said, The recognising that we're not always going to get it right, and asking for advice. And as Aisling so beautifully illustrated, also sort of recognising what could have been done differently or better, and acknowledging that. So I think there's lots of encouragement in the discussions that we've heard about, any one of us can step up and be part of making a difference.

11:53 And I think also recognising that it's always going to be in situations of change and challenges. That what we've seen in the last couple of years, maybe a little bit more exaggerated, if you like, and more shared global experience in terms of challenges. But if you even think back to Stuart's early days being on the picket line, there were challenges then that they were responding to. So I think that it's situation normal, that there always going to be challenges and complex issues to deal with.

12:33 The other thing that I think we've heard across all of the discussions as well, and whether is about the complex structures that we need to engage with, and that the anything that we're dealing with here is multi level. So Darragh talked about needing to have both top down and bottom up approaches, Stuart talked about the really complex management structures. Both Julie and Aisling talked about the way they had to engage, you know, top down and bottom up and across as well. And the ways in which, when and how those sorts of interactions were important for effecting change. And through all of that, again, was that thread of the importance of listening to people.

13:21 What I also heard across the discussions was the importance of support and connection and collegiality, whether it was connecting with other heads of department, whether it was connecting with other people within the group for support, you know, for and Darragh talking, for example, about the importance of connecting with other people in the lab and just sharing and peers and just sharing. We also heard as part of this, the importance of empathy. Both Julie and Aisling mentioned that in particular, when it comes to leadership.

13:56 So let's be encouraged by what they've said. About Darragh talking about the value in putting ourselves out there. The call from Julie to try out leadership and really, that being a way of being able to amplify the impact and having bigger impacts that can be better for all. The encouragement of Aisling to create better workplaces for all of them that she benefits from as well as everyone else. Of Stuart recognising the great power that there is through collective action. So how can you and I step up within our individual contexts? What are the opportunities right now where we can listen better? To understand the concerns and the issues? And where we can connect to our values and strengths, and work out how we can best make a contribution to having an impact in our local contexts?

15:04 And Julie's decision framework that she had that was more talking about her research, I think can also be useful here. So I and I would sort of riff off her decision framework as she talked about, will I have fun doing it? Will I learn something from it? Am I uniquely qualified to do it? And I'd sort of unpack that mi uniquely qualified to do it to think about what are the unique strengths that I can bring to this right now, you know, and then your unique passions. So I look forward to bringing more conversations in 2023.

15:46

And just to end on a slightly different note, can I encourage you just to take some time to reflect back on your 2022 on what you achieved, what you've enjoyed, what you've survived? And take a little bit of time just to pat yourself on the back as well. Because I think that one of the things that Darragh talked about was with the imposter, we often don't sit with our achievements very long. We're always looking for the next thing. Yes, we've accomplished this. And what's the next thing is we're immediately jumping to that because there's always something more.

16:29 So, in closing, I just like to encourage us all to take to gift ourselves, five minutes, 10 minutes just to sit and reflect on what we're proud of this year. And it could be achievements could be things like, you know, the usual publications or grants. But it could just be that we made it to the end of the year, that we're relatively saying that we're, that we're healthy enough. It could be valuing and being grateful for the social connections that we have for the supports we have. It could be the gratitude for reconnecting to that to what's important to us and getting better perspective, given all the challenges that we've had in the last couple of years. So taking some time just to stop and reflect and celebrate, and savour and I'll point to a previous related work that I did around just taking time to savour.

17:34 So may you enjoy your time at the in this in these dying minutes of 2022 to savour and reflect on what you have achieved. And looking forward to 2023. And towards this I'll also put a link in the on the web page to another related work podcast that was called my year of being bold. That actually talked about the value of deciding on some theme that's going to set you up for your new year to describe your new year in terms of some overall connection to your why. What do you want this year to be for you? So all the best. And thank you for listening with me for this year.

18:25 [Outro]

19:17 End

Mary Parker Follett - power over, power with

And a recent paper reviewing some of the literature on power over, to, with:

Pamela Pansardi & Marianna Bindi (2021) The new concepts of power? Power-over, power-to and power-with, Journal of Political Power, 14:1, 51-71, DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2021.1877001

RW9 Progress and praise [23:27 mins] - the discussion on savouring in particular starts at 18:46 mins.

RW1 My year of being bold [10:11 mins] - your theme for 2023?

Dr. Aisling O’Kane is an Associate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in Health at the University of Bristol in the UK. In Part 1 of our conversation, she talked about her very diverse background ad reflected on issues like the importance of mobility, the challenges being part of an academic couple with family, and the impact of COVID. In Part 2 here, she goes on to talk about how she came to take on an acting Head of Department role as a relatively junior faculty member, motivated by wanting to try to make a better workplace for herself and others. She also talks about issues of power and engagement and what she terms ‘a radical participatory decision making’ approach as way to try to engage people in being part of the change.

“[Prev HoD] was the poster child of what you want for leadership, just his emotional intelligence, his empathy, his view on things engaging with people is fantastic.”

“You might think…what to sacrifice, what a volunteer. It was entirely selfish. I wanted a better workplace.”

“I certainly wasn’t the authority figure.”

“So that was pulling on…my research, which involves co design…participatory design, and treating that year…as a big co design activity and making decisions that way. “ 

“I remember arriving and being new and female and and not feeling like I could talk about things.”

“I am much more confident going into it and knowing that I don't know things and it's okay… And to be able to reach out and ask the stupid questions and not be ashamed of what you don't know.”

“I'm happier here now. It's more collegiate place in a nicer place to work.”

00:28 Episode introduction

0:05 Introduction to Part 2 of this episode.

2:24 The current situation in computer science at Bristol

5:21 The transition from a department into a school and the need for leadership.

10:51 The wild west of the university system.

17:15 The key things that made it work for a year.

23:24 The importance of being part of the change and the cost of being selfish.

27:12 The move to online discussions and decision making and how people feel about it.

32:51 What Aisling learned from this year as head

38:09 Being proud of what she has achieved and also reflecting on the mistakes

41:00 My final reflections

43:43 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation

Seth Bullock

Chris Allen

Bristol Interaction Group

Related podcasts:

Aisling Part 1 of our conversation

RW6 Exploring your own superpowers

RW7 Job Crafting - small tweaks can make a big difference

Dr. Aisling O’Kane is an Associate Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in Health at the University of Bristol in the UK. In Part 1 of our conversation, she talks about her very diverse background from engineering to human factors and working in industry, from margarine, beer and nuclear risk assessment, then to doing a PhD, and now being in a faculty position. Along the way she reflects on the importance of mobility, the challenges being part of an academic couple with family, and the impact of COVID. In Part 2, we will go on to talk about how she came to take on an acting Head of Department role to try to make a better workplace for herself and others.

“I'm really quite passionate about understanding the real world influence on these things that are designed to be safety critical for health.”

“It is luck. But it's a lot to do with my parents, setting me up with an education that I could I could pursue something of interest rather than just having to focus on making money.”

“We're very lucky here to have not only superstars, but they're also really nice…they're all parents as well.”

Overview (times approximate):

00:30 Preamble

02:31 Aisling introduces herself, her very diverse background, and draws the threads together in her current work on safety critical health technologies.

06:49 Combining experiences from different disciplinary areas and experiences for her PhD and current work around real world influences on safety critical systems

09:40 The important influence of her parents on so-called luck

11:30 Reflecting on the skills needed to bridge different disciplinary and application domains

15:47 The importance of mobility and ability to travel for her and the impact of COVID, having two children and the ‘two body problem’ as well as the environmental impact concerns

20:31 Coming out of COVID and choosing to go into the office now for more face to face, chit chat banter with nice colleagues, lab meetings and accommodating people’s different childcare responsibilities using online tools

24:54 Impacts of COVID on CV etc, as well as the passive impact of choosing to have two kids on her CV and research trajectory and appreciating having the safety net of a permanent role

26:21 Reflecting on some tips and tricks for how to manage that, eg using external conference and review deadlines

28:06 Reflecting on generational differences

31:15 My final reflections

33:19 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation.

Paul Marshall, Bristol

Kia Höök KTH (see also the CAL podcast episode with Kia)

Helena Mentis

Megan Morgan and Sam James, Bristol - PhD student of Aisling

Michael Carter, Uni of Toronto

Gregory Abowd who was at Georgia Tech now at Northeastern

Gillian Hayes and Yunan Chen, Irvine (see also the CAL podcast episode with Yunan)

Sun Young Park

Rob Comber and Madeline Balaam, KTH Stockholm

Mike Fraser, Anne Roudaut, Oussama Metatla, and Chris Priest, Bristol Uni

KTH Interactive Systems Engineering Masters program

Mobile Life Centre, Sweden

UCL Interaction Centre UCLIC, UK

CHI_Med EPSRC-funded project

Dr. Stuart Reeves is an Associate Professor in the Mixed Reality Lab and Horizon Research Institute at Nottingham University in the UK. This conversation is in two parts. In Part 1 of our conversation, he reflected on the complexities of universities and the structural/managerial issues that contribute to this. In Part 2 here, Stuart goes on to describe his journey from protesting about pensions on the picket line to becoming an academic member of the university Senate and his experiences of trying to effect change in university governance. As you will understand, he necessarily has to be circumspect about the specific details he shares but nonetheless there is much to be inspired by hearing someone not just see challenges but commit to being part of the change to meet these challenges.

“Just making a noise about stuff can bring it onto the agenda.”

“People will say…they're just activists…but they miss the fact that…there's a lot of people who agree with you, or at least have some kind of similar troubles with how universities work.”

“Sometimes universities do stupid things…partly just because they've just not consulted people.”

“The more people…involved in speaking about regular issues, the better.”

“Through that collective action, there's great power.”

00:29 My introduction to Stuart

02:55 How Stuart responds personally – he tells the story of his 2018 involvement in the strike about pensions and how it was the trigger for him thinking that he should start to do something more about this

08:37 This led him and some others to run for the university senate and effect change in that way, albeit it being a slow frustrating process of change

11:30 The level of commitment being part of Senate

12:49 The sorts of changes that can be effected via the Senate work, e.g., structural changes in ways the Senate works, centralization/decentralization discussions, having the long view, connecting with others also asking what are universities for, how to make it more democratic

17:49 Reflects on the importance of it being ‘the bunch of us’ doing this work, collegiality, and people responding differently in terms of action

21:54 The costs of getting involved in these ways and the types of time and effort involved and wanting to see universities become less top down

27:37 Advice for anyone who may be thinking about getting involved in university governance

30:02 The lack of collective action by university leadership

31:17 Signing up to DORA has been useful to push back on metrics for publications

32:09 The rankings racket, like QS and Times Higher, and a call for university leadership to get together and push back a bit in the way they have done with journals

33:51 Why he is still in academia

37:17 My final reflections

38:43 End

Download a full transcript of the conversation here.

USS pension scheme

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)

QS World University Rankings

Times Higher World University Rankings

Stuart’s Medium article 2017: Thoughts on the UK’s Teaching Excellence Framework.

 Stuart Reeves, Murray Goulden, and Robert Dingwall. The future as a design problem. Design Issues, 32(3), Summer 2016.

Stuart’s tweet about what they are striking for