Joining a dinner party

I hope this is the first of several posts about the practice of being a researcher and a writer. As I get into the depths of my book on the water crisis (under contract with Verso Books), I find myself spending a lot of time thinking about writing, and about my own research projects. And also, I guess this is a pleasant diversion from a long-term, and time-consuming, writing project. I thank my former colleague – the brilliant Professor Hilary Geoghegan – for prompting me to write this.

I like metaphors, and I think that my students know that I like them, as there are some that I have been using repeatedly over the last few years. Building a research project is a bit like building a car. You can have the doors and chassis (title and research question), a good steering wheel (dependent and independent variables), but if your engine (methodology) doesn’t work, then your car is not going anywhere. This is what I tend to respond when someone asks me about their methodology, as I do think that the methodology –and to me methodology means the way in which theory, methods and aim/research question are put together – is a crucial component, arguably the most important one, in any research project.

My students, and most early career researchers, are usually confused about their methodology, and a few more things. I guess some of the following questions will sound familiar to all those who have supervised or conducted a researched project:

• what is my theory?
• do I get to choose a theory?
• how do I expand or advance theory?
• can I adopt two different theoretical frameworks? (yes, I do get a lot of questions about theory)
• are qualitative methods less “scientific” than quantitative ones (spoiler: no!)
• what is the difference between primary and secondary sources?

And I could go on. Then there is another question that I inevitably get asked and that sometimes I put on the table myself, as it concerns something that always deserves to be clarified: what is a literature review and how do I make a contribution to knowledge?

And here, I have another metaphor, which apparently works well, as my former colleague, the brilliant Professor Hilary Geoghegan, asked me to put it in writing so that we can share it with our students. So here it is.

In my experience, the easiest way to explain what a literature review is, is to think about a dinner table, one that you are joining when the dinner has already started. Picture yourself entering a room, and there is a big dinner table, one of those that you usually see during a diplomatic event (here is a picture that I found on Wikimedia from the Carl Albert Research and Studies Center that I think gives you the idea):

There are around four dozen people sitting at that table, and, lucky you (or maybe not), there is an empty chair where you can sit if you like. As I said, the dinner has already started, and people had been chatting for a while. Now, think about these people as the names in your list of references. You know that researchers have debates, and you do know that these debates are usually more tense among those that are sitting closer (either at our dinner table, or within a research subfield or those working on a similar case study or geographical place). And then, these debates and discussions get more general, and sometimes they concern all those that are sitting at the table (a discipline, or even a few different disciplines, a few regions of the world and so on). Spend a few minutes listening to those conversations, they might sound familiar to you, if you have already conducted your literature review and reached your saturation point. You might understand or be able to track back a specific topic to those 3 or 4 people who indeed wrote a lot about it, and left a mark (or a dent) in an imaginary log (yes, another metaphor) that we have all been shaping during the last few years. Remember, those people are the key names in your list of references. And remember that in our metaphor, you are arriving late at the dinner table.  Then, the next things that you need to consider are: what I am going to say to them? what am I adding to their ongoing conversation? where am I sitting at that table?

This, in a nutshell, is the meaning of writing a literature review and making a contribution to knowledge. You need to read. A lot. You need to know the key authors in your field, and the key journals too, because sometimes a great paper by an early career researcher or a PhD student gets published and you might want to know about it, as there might be a connection with your research or your interests. This is going to help you when it comes to knowing who should be sitting at your particular dinner table, and perhaps most importantly, what are you going to say to those people. Any academic paper, or book, will be read by a few hundred people, and in some rare cases, a few thousand. But those that are really interested about your research – your audience – are usually a few dozen. These are the people that you want to engage with, and while you do it maybe share a pizza, a drink, or a table.