29 April 2012
By Sarah Davies
One of the fun parts of my research – in what sometimes gets called Science, Technology and Society Studies – is that I get to investigate the process of research itself – to look at how other scholars go about imagining the process they’re engaged in.* The other day I was helping with a focus group with a group of biomedical researchers which involved a discussion of why they did what they did: was it to produce a good product for industry? To help society in some broader, more general way? Or simply because it was their job?
People’s responses came from a number of different directions – they had multiple, different motivations for doing what they did. Which I guess is true of all of us. I’d like to think that my research has the potential, at least, to do some good in the world, but I also (perhaps mostly) do it because I love it and find it fascinating. I know some people who are more instrumental about their work: doing a PhD is a good background for them to get another (more highly paid) job. Others again just need to pay the bills. And I’m sure there are many more motivations for doing the research we do. When it comes down to it, what would you say drives you?
* Of course, this can all get a bit meta. At the moment my department is hosting a scholar who is doing an ethnography of us: she is watching us watching scientists do research…
Sandrine Berges30 April 2012 at 02:29 PM
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That's a surprisingly tough question. I've always regarded myself as driven, not just someone who fell in to philosophy because that seemed like the easy thing to do (and I don't know that anyone does that, just that some people may claim they do!) When I'm writing about ancient philosophy, I feel driven by the need to show the world that reading Plato et al, if not giving us the solution to all our problems on a plate, is actually a good place to start. Sometimes, it's just the need to get one line of text right. When I do political/feminist philosophy I am driven by anger and frustration at the state of the world, and the delusion that writing and talking about things can help. Increasingly I write about ancient philosophy and feminism at the same time, and my two research persona are fading into one. I guess it means that I'm now driven by the belief that reading Plato will help promote women's rights... erm... As I said, it's a tough question!
Tennie Videler01 May 2012 at 09:38 AM
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the first thing that sprung to my mind in answer to your question, Sarah, was the term 'Little porfessor' from Transactional Analysis- the part of us that is still a child wanting to find out about the world (for the sake of finding out)- I think this is mainly what drove me when I was still a full-time researcher. It is such a privilege to be employed to follow that sort of instinct! Secondary, I think it becomes a habit/ lifestyle as it is what you and your peers do.
Funny thing is that the research I do now, with Vitae and the UKRSA, is more borne out of a need to know. In order to advice/ support people properly in their career decisions we need ot know what the career destinations of their predecessors are.... The thrill of finding out something that noone else yet knows is very much secondary.
Blanka Sengerová03 May 2012 at 08:53 AM
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I think it's a mixture of both, partly because it's your job and partly because you're excited by the research project. As for the latter though, I think that at the postdoc and PhD stage (certainly early postdoc) you have to become excited by it once you start working on it, because the choice of research is most likely your PI's. As such, had I got the job I was interviewed for in the same week as for the one I'm in now, I am sure I could have got excited and found niche bits to explore about a protein from Mycobacterium tuberculosis rather than a protein involved in crosslink repair.
As you get further down your career and become named on grants and write your own grant proposals, you must be continuing to reserach because you're excited by the subject - if you're not then why are you doing it? However, don't get me wrong about the early career researchers not having any input into their research project, I think they (we!) can have a very useful independent input depending on their expertise. For instance I am very proud of my assay development both during my PhD and my current project which led into offshoot projects for students working in the groups after me.