Present: Alex, Anna-Maria, Arran, Julia, Nina
Agenda:
Quick overview of the areas of work
Connection points between the areas of work
Practical steps in bringing the areas of work together (what, who, how, when)
Quick Overview:
Arran: How responsible research and the social machine are dependant on one another; symbiotic relationship. UK digital data collection register; TaNC moving away from ‘National’ - one of the technical structures of the social machine, an example of decentralised infrastructure. Wiki-based/cloud-based. Do some work on the structure of wiki-base /cloud infrastructure - talk through the complexities there, what the organisation stands for?
Anna-Maria: Data management work which has fed into the Data Ethics approach, and is now embedded project practice. This has been important for us from the beginning. Document the data sets that we have, for future work, the data sets will now naturally sit as part of the data collection register. Positionality cards and framework; important, but still trying to make a way for it to fit within the other areas of this work. Could sit in the same workflow as the data sets. Fill in data sets we are using, and perform an assessment of positionality at this stage. Also an evaluation of this process at the end of the pipeline. It is an ethical framework for our data-driven processes in the project. Sees Race and Decolonisation is a layer that sits/cuts through all of this work we are talking about today.
Arran: I think taking some of the concepts we've been working through in the Race and Decolonisation work, and the social machine work and using them as specific prompts in the positionally work, that then informs the creation of the data sheets is really helpful.
Julia: Take the social machine principles, practice and thinking (decolonial thinking and practice as part of this) and this can inform the positionality work which in turn informs creating more informed data-sets. You know more, you’re more reflective. Positionality aware work is about knowing where we are in relation to the work we are doing.
Alex: Critique of positionality statements - recent article that has come out that prompted conversation, academics of colour that find positionality statements be unhelpful and active block to work that leads to systemic change/seen as something in place of systemic change.
Nina: Careful as a project and what gets fed into TaNC recommendations and future iterations of the project that are words are not used to produce a broad statement on positionality/data-ethics/race and decolonisation that stands in place of doing the work. It is also about how our work will be taken and viewed or used by other projects…
Arran: We should also think what the point for us is? What does doing the work look like in this project?
Anna-Maria: Question of whether we should be creating a toolkit? Is this now a redundant practice - a question of what is in the toolkit/how it is formulated/how it is used. Shares an example of a toolkit: https://themuseumsai.network/toolkit/.
Arran: Interesting to think of what TaNC are doing with our recommendations and what we are doing/providing researchers/what we produce as a tangible project. These can be linked, can point to each other, but they can also be distinct and point in different directions. The TaNC recommendations will be produced before we have finished our projects - have come from the second project reports.
Alex: Producing a toolkit now for anti-ableist practice in archaeology (still stuck in that hole lol) - thinking about the pitfalls and practices to avoid. Includes very practical pointers, outlining basic anti-ableist principles, showing how they are linked to the work that these archaeologists are doing. How one can inform the other. Cannot change things if elements of the toolkit are not put into practice. We often talk about this at the institutional level but how do we maintain this at a community level and sustain it in these space - its a complex series of interconnected relationships and practices - it would be larger than a toolkit!
Arran: Discussion groups have largely been discussing theory talking about how some of this can apply in a Congruence Engine context - we are now trying to gauge how this is coming through in the project (e.g. the survey - but this has only been answered by 8 people, which is instructive in itself).
Anna Maria: Plenty of room for us to create a toolkit that represents our work - we could be more creative about the creation of it. We do not have to call it - or think of it as a toolkit. Could be an accessible way to create knowledge. A tick-box exercise but people’s engagement with this could go beyond ticking boxes.
Arran: Perhaps something linear wouldn't fit the complex, winding and interconnected conceptualisation of our work from a systemic action research perspective. We need to think about the audience - the breadth of people we are speaking to. It is not as simple as something we should ‘do’ - when we think about responsible research and the social machine together - it is all encompassing. Linear steps of a toolkit don’t quite fit the non-linear structure of a project like ours.
Julia: Not creating steps- but here is what to consider? What are to be aware of? What to think through before doing this work?
Anna Maria: What is missing from this document is the investigations. How can include these and the ways of working. Diagram that represents the project - the discussion that we are having here about the RR and SM is on this diagram - but trying to see where it is in the project.
Arran: RR and SM principles --> examples (investigations) --> recommended tangible tasks?
Nina: Perhaps the diagram for the project is not the be all and end all of are understanding of how the RR and SM are working within, through, throughout the project. The way Anna Maria categorised the race and decolonisation work - as cutting through all the elements of RR is the way we could think about things. Taking social machine principles; do, reflect, re-evaluate, do… Can we do a piece of work that draws out the ways in which people across the project have been interacting with, influenced by, changed by these discussions.
Arran: Action Research: Ways of thinking, Ways of knowing, Ways of being. Different way knowledge is created. Iterations of investigations meeting, project structure, thinking - it is all part of action research cycles. We have been doing huge iterations of how we have been thinking - embedding knowledge along the way. We have changed how things have operated but there are always subtle ways that the project is working. We are thinking of how to surface this work that has been happening - how to surface Race and Decolonisation work as part of this. Not about representing seismic shifts - but subtle changes in thinking, practices and ways of being.
Julia: Thinking about these things = creating a big piece of work. This will be a lot of the focus once the Bradford events are over. A lot of work will be the surfacing of what this has all meant, and how can we have it inform the work we are doing as researchers. Spending some time after the summer thinking about this - how it is exemplified in the project - writing this up. To distil these elements, add weight to our knowledge processes.
Alex: This work will help in giving the post-Bradford work some structure based on reflection and learnings.
Arran: After Bradford there will be capacity to take this work forward through the project. We went through a similar process reflecting on what the Co-Is were thinking about/seeing on the project - series of 1:1 meetings to talk about this. We could use this process; a series of action research discussions where we talk through RR and SM principles, where people think they have informed or surfaced through their work. Can inform the tangible output of this work.
Anna Maria: This makes sense. Have created a document with everything we have been doing in this area over the last two years but what would be useful as a starting point? What would be a useful document to have before the reflective work begins?
Julia: We need to go into these discussions with a clear idea of what we want out of it and the people we are speaking to need to have a clear idea of what we are discussing. I think it would be useful for this whole group to do that as exercise. Something to discuss after Bradford - a little more talking with each other and we know what we want to pull out of those events.
Arran: Documents to use to inform this; Project manifesto, research questions on the Miro for the social machine, topics and questions from the Race and Decolonisation discussion groups - form into principles for this area of work. From this long list that we narrow it down and think about the categories, clusters, and area of work in which we have followed this guiding thoughts and questions for the project, get to the specifics of what has caused changes in thinking - distil and refine what the ‘principles’ of our work have been: What is the point? What does this work look like within the project?
Working a structure to be able to navigate through the following: Social machine manifesto Social machine research questions R&D questions and resonating topics Responsible Research points Positionality framework steps
Julia: Bring this work to the centre - distilling our learning and furthering what people do as a result of this reflective work.
Anna Maria: Tasks that come out of this. Create a document with clear points from above - all elements of RR and SM included. Reconvene in early July?
Arran: We should include the detail of the text in this document, but have a Notion page as an active and transparent form of documentation for how we're bringing this work together.
Alex: Responsible research retreat in July?
Anna Maria: A museum of toolkits/a directory of toolkits/a toolkit of toolkits.
Notes:
Miro Board: Responsible Research, Visual Workspace for Innovation (miro.com)
Articles on positionality and critiques of positionality statements:
https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/68/2/sqae038/7642608?login=false