PGR Stories: Suzannah Young and researching the homeless

Suzannah Young is a postgraduate researcher in the School of Modern Languages. Her research aims to find out where help with language is needed in homelessness services in Bristol and Cardiff, and what support is already available to people who need it. She wrote a post for us discussing her research, its value and impact, and what her PhD process has entailed so far. 

Before starting at Bristol in September 2015, I worked for FEANTSA, the federation of homelessness services in Europe, for six years.  I am also a translator and have an interest in migration. My research project aims to find out where help with language is needed in Bristol and Cardiff homelessness services and what support is available to people who need help.

When people move to a new country, they can become vulnerable to poverty, isolation and discrimination.  If people who move country do not have access to employment or government help, or cannot find a place to live because landlords discriminate against them, they might end up homeless.  

Homeless people need to use services that give advice, defend their rights and provide material support like food, clothes and showers.  It can be difficult for people with low levels of English to use these services.  The services might not feel able to talk to these people either.  An interpreter (someone who translates a spoken message from one language into another) can help them interact with each other.  

When I was working at FEANTSA, I often came across research or reports on practice that said that language difference was a problem for homeless service providers.  It was a problem because they couldn’t communicate effectively with homeless people who spoke another language.  There wasn’t any discussion of what was done to solve this problem, though.  As I am passionate about languages and believe that everyone should have the right to a decent home, I wanted to set about finding out what was being done to help homeless people who speak other languages.

My research therefore looks at what is being done on the ground, in a context of squeezed budgets: whether people using homelessness services have access to interpreters or other types of language support, like staff who speak other languages, internet translation tools or peers (other service users) who act as interpreters.  The study compares the situations in Bristol and Cardiff.  It may discover good ways of working that services can copy from each other.

I would like to interview homelessness service users, homelessness service providers and language professionals to ask them about their experiences in this area – of accessing language support or of providing it.  The plan is also to ask service users to produce (anonymous if wished) video diaries in which they can say in their own language what they would have liked to have said if they had had access to an interpreter when using a service.  This would reflect their direct voice.  Asking participants to use visual representations also diffuses the tension of language – if they wish, they can ‘speak without words’.  

This project is multilingual because I will be interviewing people who speak a variety of languages.  This will mean that preparation and data collection will involve various time-consuming and expensive language-related tasks.  I will translate materials myself or through translators.  I will employ interpreters to mediate interviews.  I will use external transcribers to transcribe interview data and video diary entries in languages I do not understand.  I will use translators to check the accuracy of the interpreting for languages I do not understand and I will employ subtitlers to translate the video diaries for the languages I do not understand.

The results should reflect the multilingualism of the project itself.  I would like to provide a series of narratives for service users to take away, which can act as a guide to using language support services.  I will need to make this available in other languages (which would require money, time and proofreading).  The video diaries should be subtitled, and I hope the subtitles will be available in all the languages involved, not just in English.

The results of the study could be made available in a usable format to services for homeless people.  They could be made into a briefing document that gives examples of how to work with an interpreter or translator or how to deal with a communication problem.  Another briefing document for language professionals working for homelessness services can give specific guidelines about language requirements in homelessness services.

Welcome, New Students!

It’s the end of September: the leaves are starting to turn, our morning commutes to work are dewy and brisk, and summer feels like a half-remembered dream. But it’s not quite autumn yet, and in the world of academia this can only mean one thing: WELCOME WEEK! That’s right, the time has arrived for the annual inundation of new faces and minds across University of Bristol’s campus, freshening the scene with the enthusiasm that typically accompanies new beginnings and opportunities. We at the Bristol Doctoral College love this time of year because we can feel new students’ anticipation for the year ahead, and more importantly, because it doesn’t only mean the arrival of 8,000 undergraduates but also the arrival of a large portion of our postgraduate researchers. Amidst the daunting undergraduate crowd that typically dominates Welcome Week, it can sometimes be a struggle to find what the University and city have to offer its new early researchers, and so we’re here to help you navigate your way.

First and foremost, the BDC is a portal for all questions and queries regarding the postgraduate researcher experience. See our ‘about’ page for an overview of our values and objectives. We are delighted to announce the roll-out of our new website, which offers a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the latest news, events and opportunities, as well as an insight on the goings-on in PGR life around Bristol. Recent highlights include the development of our Information Hub, an essential guide to all things PGR-related, and the results of our “Where In The World Are You?” survey we conducted via facebook and twitter, through which we marked a map to trace the exciting research-related travel of all our PGRs over the summer.

The BDC is also a central provider of your personal and professional development. We believe everyone can build their desired experience whilst at Bristol, and we are here to provide the tools and resources for you to do so. Whether it is a specific research tool you need to learn in order to conduct your work, or the chance to teach in schools, or an ongoing opportunity to develop a personal goal, we are here to help you. Check out our entire catalogue of training & development through STaR, our Skills Training and Review tool. For more information about STaR, we are hosting a STaR drop-in sessions on Friday 25 September, Wednesday 30 September and Friday 2 October  from 12-2pm in the lower study area of Senate House.

Finally, we’d like to extend a warm “HELLO” to all of our new postgraduate researchers, and a thank you for choosing to study at Bristol. Be sure to read through the latest Bulletin so you can plan your diary around the exciting events coming up: the Festival of Ideas kicks off this week and runs through October, and the Bristol Bright Night this Friday (25th September) is a wonderful research-oriented introduction to the harbourside and local Bristol treasures. We hope that you can find something to suit your wants and needs in these coming weeks, and that your transition into PGR life at Bristol runs smooth. Between us and the PG-specific Welcome Week events, we are sure you are busy already exploring the city and getting to know your way around campus, meeting fellow researchers and setting up appointments with your supervisors!

Welcome, and in the words of poet Rainer Maria Rilke, “and now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been”.

Representing the misrepresented

Wingrove_1Louise Wingrove is a third-year postgraduate researcher in the department of Drama: Theatre, Film and Television. Her research is focused on how the lives of working women were represented by serio-comediennes on the Victorian music-hall stage, using the characters and careers of Jenny Hill (1848-1896) and Bessie Bellwood (1856-1896) as case studies.  Most of her research is archive based, piecing together long lost careers, songs and venues through files of reviews, photographs and sheet music.

This is Louise’s third entry for the ‘Year in the Life of a PhD’ blog. Her first entry, entitled ‘Belonging in archives’, discussed the challenges of finding your niche as a researcher and the joy of learning new skills, and Louise reflects on her experiences and what lies ahead in her second post ‘New Year’s revelations’.

Entering my write up stage, I am strangely surprised to find that the clichéd phrase “the time will fly by” uttered to me so many times at the start of my PhD is completely true.  It has been a whirlwind of nineteenth century studies, learning curves and more personal realisations than I can count and I have loved it more than I ever imagined.  Now, having felt and acknowledged the imposter syndrome and panic attacks, it is a preoccupation with preconceptions, clichés and misrepresentation that is currently plaguing me.

I am a Chihuahua owning, dyspraxic, ex-bibliophobic PhD student with an almost unhealthy sitcom and RuPaul’s Drag Race obsession.  Each of these things in isolation are pre-loaded with assumptions and clichés about my personality, whether representative or not.  Even my choice of Music Hall comediennes as a topic for research comes with many preconceptions – something I am sure we all find when trying to explain the nuances of our study to someone else.

My clichéd preoccupations initially began after realising that I had had the following conversation to the point of it becoming a cliché:

Lovely person who doesn’t realise the can of worms they are opening:  “So, how many words do you have to write for a PhD?  Really?  How can you write that much?”

Me:  *not at all trying to be smug, but maybe with a little too much pride*  “Well, it’s more like how can I possibly fit in all I have to say – I have too much material and not enough room!”

I heard people answer in the same way before I started my PhD, and I have fallen into the cliché myself.  What I don’t say, however, is that at each stage I too have wondered how I would make the word count.  By studying performers whose huge popularity is now largely forgotten, I (secretly) worried that I would be lucky to scrape enough material together.  Then I learnt more about their careers, their personal lives, the importance of placing their work within a social historical context and the separating of truth from urban myth, and I soon discovered there was a lot to cover.  This resulted in my choosing only two performers to research.  This again filled me with a “not enough material” panic until I went even deeper and found myself surrounded by so many different spreadsheets and case studies that were “vital” that I couldn’t possibly cut it down without major tantrums.

During this, I found the truth in another piece of advice given to the point of it becoming a cliché –the importance of your relationship with your supervisor. I have always said I have been exceptionally lucky to have such an amazing supervisor, but it was at this point I really began to understand the importance of this relationship.  Her ability to both calm and offer constructive suggestions of ways to order and present the wealth of research obtained in an archival approach has been integral to getting me through my study.  My research content continually shifts, affecting the usefulness of different ways of presenting the data.  However, each way we discuss has made it clearer to me whilst allowing me to follow my instinct and calmly continue on to my next hurdle.  This stable relationship has even enabled me to send work off to be looked at without the crippling fear that I will get an email back simply saying “Why?” and “Give up!”

But it is now that I am facing my biggest cliché, preconception and misrepresentation hurdle of all – how to represent Jenny Hill and Bessie Bellwood.  On a simple level, I am myth busting; showing how preconceptions surrounding these comediennes careers and materials are flawed.  It’s about showing how performers engaged and reflected a variety of social issues and me challenging assumptions surrounding the working methods of these women and what they wished to represent to an audience.  On a more complex level – I have fallen in love with Hill and Bellwood!  I feel like I know them exceptionally well, making me overprotective of them.  This makes me want to include every tiny thing I know about them and cut nothing so as to build a full picture, highlighting their good and explaining any ‘questionable behaviour’ as I don’t want people to form assumptions about them.  I wouldn’t only want to be remembered and represented by one aspect of my life, which could skew understanding of my complexities as a person.  I’m not only a Chihuahua owner!  I must remain objective, documenting their career development and material and, ironically, the ways in which their reputations were possibly misrepresented by the press to keep them within social ideals and constructs.  To represent them properly, I must learn to distance myself as I am building a picture of them based on archive materials, not on my first hand knowledge of them as living people.

So now, I must face up to the biggest drama cliché of all and “cut my baby,” represent them as best I can and stay thankful to all the support around me.  And possibly buy shares in Rescue Remedy for all the tantrums!

Getting to grips with your subject…

tessa profile v3Tessa Coombes is a first year postgraduate researcher in the School for Policy Studies. After recently completing the MSc in Public Policy at the University of Bristol, she decided to stay on and continue her research interest in politics, policy process and housing. Her research is focused on how housing policy is treated at a time of political change. Using the Bristol Mayoral Election 2016 as the basis of her study she will look at agenda setting, influence and policy change in Bristol.

I’ve just about reached the half-year mark in my PhD, that is, I started my PhD just six months ago. It seems like longer but also like no time at all. Over the last month or so I’ve been putting together a PhD plan to identify what I need to do, and when, over the next three years. This is just an initial sketch and broad outline, but is a guide to setting more detailed objectives, something I have now done for the next six months. The thing that struck me most is that three years isn’t very long. When you begin to break it down into small chunks of work to be done before you start the fieldwork, the first 12 months vanish very quickly under a myriad of literature, methods, organising and planning.

One of the things I realised very quickly when drawing up my plan, is that I don’t really quite know what my research is about. Well, I know the broad area I’m interested in and I know what I want to study. But I’ve a long way to go before I am fully cognisant with the existing literature in my field and before I fully appreciate the complexities of specific methods of research. I’ve started that process of understanding but have so much more to learn. Indeed, I spent much of the first six months studying research methods through taught courses and assignments. About five months too long in my view, but a necessary evil and a key part of any PhD programme.

I have now begun the topic-based literature search process in earnest. I’m trying to use some of the things I learnt during my research methods training to ensure I undertake a somewhat more systematic approach than I would normally adopt. I’ve set out key search terms, established where I’ll search for information, decided on exclusion and inclusion criteria and I’ve set up a comprehensive system for logging all the information I collect throughout the months of searching and reading. That’s far more organised than I’ve ever been in the past when it comes to seeking out literature.

Now I’m a month or so into the process I am beginning to feel slightly overwhelmed – not just by the amount of literature that I need to consume but also by the complexity and language used in some of it. Once more it leaves me feeling a little stupid and frequently bemused. I find myself asking the following question regularly:  “why am I doing a PhD, what on earth made me think I was clever enough to try?” Maybe this relates to the “imposter” syndrome others have mentioned in their blogs and I guess most researchers will ask themselves that question, or something similar, throughout their research. It could be seen as a negative thought process but for me it’s a useful prompt, that pushes me harder to prove a point, that yes I can do this but it’s going to be tough.

So, what am I actually doing and what is my PhD about? I feel like I am getting closer to the answer to that and I feel a little more comfortable that I have a topic worth researching, that might even be of interest to someone other than me. Over the last month or so I’ve tried out a few different versions of my response to this question in order to see which works best and how people respond. I’ve come up with a variety of short answers, depending on who is asking. For now, I’ll say my PhD is about agenda-setting, power and influence, using the Bristol Mayoral election in 2016 as a case study. I’m doing an ethnographic study, which seeks to provide a better understanding of the tactics used by different actors to move housing issues up (and down) the political agenda. I am interested in how actors at the centre of the action perceive and respond to influence and lobbying and how the newly elected mayor will decide on policy priorities and change. I’m hoping it will be of interest to scholars of the policy process, to those with an interest in political change and will also help practitioners to understand how power and influence works at a local level.

That’s what I’ll be spending the next 3 years learning all about and I’m both excited and daunted by the prospect. A PhD is an individual learning process and one where I am in the driving seat. It’s totally different to what I have been doing for the last 20 years in work so it’s challenging, which is part of what makes it worth doing. But above all, it’s interesting, as my PhD brings together, in one study, many of the things that I find fascinating: housing, policy, politics, and Bristol.