Juggling all the deadlines

Hello everyone,

how are you? I hope (for anyone in Edinburgh) that you are enjoying some of the sunshine we had this week & that the semester is going along well. I think we are all currently trying to juggle all the various deadlines and amongst all that I have come to realise that I require (rather sooner than later) a timeline and plan for my masters project.

So I just wanted to briefly use this space to order my thoughts and build a little “roadmap” for the next couple of weeks which will hopefully help me to get a clear idea of where I am heading with my project after all the hand-ins (and a little cycling break).

As I have mentioned before I have applied for a potential Travel Grant to conduct my research project abroad. I would be super keen to tell people’s stories through photography and thus also attempt at communicating the importance of researcher in a more relatable way to the general public. However, I haven’t quite heard yet (I will soon) and I am aware that I need a back-up plan so that I am not set back to square 1 if the response is negative. And a wee plan to make sure (while busy) I keep thinking about this now (very soon) upcoming project.

So here is a rough plan (or attempt at structuring a plan):

Week 10 – feedback about the Travel Grant

If positive – Send out emails to connect to local charities, outline research objectives and purpose and see whether they could help link me up with different people. Start planning when I can ideally head out. Checklist for travel & Checklist for what research needs to be done prior!!

If negative – That’s a good question. Should I have a complete change of plans and focus on something more “traditional” because it will allow me to be more flexible on where I am and when I want to work and take a bit of pressure off. Or should I keep going with my idea because I was very excited about doing a creative project? One idea I had (and could do UK-based) is to look specifically in the light of the Ukrainian refugee crisis what role Cryptocurrency played for them to access money or in what way cryptocurrency was used to donate as well (see https://donate.unhcr.org/crypto/en/ukraine-emergency). There is also Charities who sent Bitcoins to Ukrainian refugees (see https://www.binance.com/en/news/flash/7299347). So many I could connect to them and see if there is the possibility to speak to refugees who received cryptocurrency as part of qualitative research?

On the other hand, (okay this maybe didn’t turn out to be a concrete plan) – i really enjoyed my last intensive on evidence & persuasion in a digital age and I think i would really enjoy some social media research. Scraping comments and analysing online discussions. Maybe I could compare the public perception of cryptocurrency donations to the actual experiences of Ukrainian refugees?

Or – and here I really need your opinion. I have just watched a panel on sustainable travel (thanks to Leanne) and became aware of how many great sustainable travel initiatives there are in small communities around Scotland. I think it would be really lovely to travel to those communities, talk to the people there and use photography as a means of displaying what different sustainable travel efforts there are in rural communities. On the other hand, my PhD is about Active Travel so maybe I should use this as a chance to do something completely different beforehand?

Okay – maybe this wasn’t quite as much of a plan as i wanted it to be. However, it think it was good to let my ideas flow a little bit. Especially since this is the first time I’ve properly sat down to think about this in a few weeks. Hopefully by next week I will get a little more clarification on the Travel Grant (which I think is what’s been putting me on hold for so long) and once I know that I can start making a proper plan 🙂 Given that a photography project would be accompanied by 8.000 words I still have plenty of potential to do a literature review, methodology and data collection. Okay – bare with me – I’m sure it will look a lot clearer in my head in the next weeks and as soon as I am set on a topic I can chose my final (& suitable) data collection methods and get started by a literature review after the deadlines. So not having 100% of a fixed plan yet doesn’t currently interfere with a prompt start date for me to work on my masters dissertation as long as I narrow down my final topic in the next weeks.

I will use week 10 to explore my options and reach out to some organisations in order to explore what is possible 🙂

After this little “head-scrambling-article” I will head off for a coffee break but then ideas are flowing and I am positive to have a clearer idea soon!