MAINTAIN AND STABILISE YOUR PROJECT - Regular reflexive meetings and interviews
Our experience: having regular meetings and one-to-one sessions devoted to just the process of the research has been instrumental to evaluating our project and its interdisciplinarity. Spending time reflecting upon the wider practices and approaches of our research has enabled us to step back and take stock of our relationships as a team, the decisions we have made, and our plans to move the project forward.
Why?
This particular theme is pertinent to having a project facilitator; someone in a more neutral role who can drive discussions about reflexivity along. However, if you do not have such a role in your project having group meetings devoted specifically to reflexivity can still be a really valuable tool to aid the evolvement of interdisciplinarity. Such discussions are about reflecting upon the project and those involved to determine future project and individual actions.
Importantly, to aid interdisciplinarity these meetings need to focus specifically upon the processes of the project and not the outcomes. In other words, how the project is working, not what it is doing or the actions it is undertaking. This is about wider evaluation, not reflection upon the daily undertakings of the project.
How?
Reflexive discussion can be promoted by thinking about:
• How team members currently feel about the project? Is it working for them? Is it a success? What are they enjoying? Not enjoying?
• Are there any conflictual situations which have recently arisen? Who are they between? Why have they occurred? How can they be resolved?
• The past, the present and the future – how do team members feel the project has progressed since the last meeting? Where would they like to see it in 3/6/12 months’ time?
• Goals and risks (see Defining goals and risks) – have these changed? How? Why?
• Is/has the project used any particular disciplinary approach at the moment? For example methods or theories?
• Are any team members playing a more central role at the moment? In what way? Is it their skills which are being utilised? Or have they taken on a particular project challenge?
• Are particular internal collaborations occurring within the project team – for instance two or three team members working on a specific project strand? How is this working?
• What is the current pace of the project? Does it feel rushed – with many decisions to make quickly, emails flying around? Or is it slow with time to assess and evaluate?
• What other activities are taking place in the project name? Presentations? Potential conferences? Publications? Networks? Meetings?
One to one
Such areas for discussion can also be used on a one to one basis – between a team member and the project facilitator. These are likely to evoke more personal responses and potentially draw upon possible areas of conflict. Furthermore, one to one work can encourage discussion around team members’ individual trajectories (see Consider team members’ trajectories’ and How are team members changing). As the project progresses individual responses can be revisited to see how things have changed and evolved. Agreed expectations of confidentiality, of course, must be respected in such circumstances.