Tips from the HASS Faculty Research Office
Research remains a priority for HASS and the FRO team will continue to be available for all research support and advice.
Please keep in touch with the FRO at research@hass.uq.edu.au if you require support in any existing or potential research activity that you may be managing right now.
Make Yourself Available for Opportunities
The HASS Faculty Research Office, have been dealing with multiple invitations to put researchers’ names forward for interdisciplinary research opportunities, including funding opportunities. Be sure to make your research is visible so that they can find you if you’re a good fit for an opportunity.
- Write an up-to-date “Overview” section for your UQ Researchers profile (see examples here and here). The overview might include something about who you are, what drives your research, what your key achievements might be, and what aspirations you have.
- Write an up-to-date “Research Impacts” section for your UQ Researchers Profile (see examples here and here).
- Make sure you have an ORCID and that it is up to date. Multiple places, including the Australian Research Council’s RMS, draw from ORCID for lists of your publications.
- Check that your eSpace is up to date, and add any new publications that have not appeared automatically. This is especially important for NTROs such as creative works and policy documents. NTROs require special eSpace entry that includes research support statements. Examples are provided on the site.
- For help or advice with any of these tasks, contact HASS Faculty Research Office.
Embrace the New Normal
Making connections virtually: We are all used to Zoom now, but plenty of other ways to connect digitally exist (WhatsApp, Slack, Teams, and many others, not to mention the old-fashioned non-digital ways like telephone). If your fieldwork was partly about making contact with new research subjects or collaborators, perhaps instead of deferring it you can build virtual relationships.
Alternative sources of data: Although there may be no alternatives for data collection for some of you right now, others might be able to consider alternative sources of data. Consider publicly available data sets, systematic literature reviews, or online interviews, surveys, or discussion platforms. For example, a crowdsourced document provides some great methods for social researchers who conduct face-to-face fieldwork.
Keep on conferencing: Many conferences are now offering virtual options. Perhaps instead of cancelling all together you can still get involved. For international conferences, it may mean getting up in the middle of the night to attend, but the jet lag might be slightly easier to recover from!
Pivot to the do-able: Without travel, qualitative coding, and preparing for conference papers, there may be more time to write. It can be part of a larger project, for example a literature review or conceptual framework, or it can be something new aimed at timely publication and building track record.
Be part of the solution: The silver lining in all of this is the way that people are reimagining our usual research activity. The usual twenty-minute conference paper in a traditional thematic panel is being upended; research engagement is taking place on different platforms that can reach wider audiences; and researchers are using their knowledge to create hope in dark times. It’s a good moment to think creatively about your research and how it can reach its different audiences.
Ask for help: The HASS team are always here to support you.
Alternative Funding Sources - VIDEO
How do you find research funding outside the ARC? Prof Kim Wilkins talks to Prof Cameron Parsell (School of Social Science) about making yourself more competitive for categories 2, 3, and 4 research funding.
Pivot- RP is now the primary tool provided by UQ to researchers to find competitive research funding opportunities. Follow the steps listed on the UQ Library website- 'Find Funding and Opportunities using Pivot-RP' to set up your account. For information on UQ Research Office Support on funding schemes see the UQ Research Management page. For more information or assistance from the HASS Faculty Research Office please contact us at research@hass.uq.edu.au.
Back to Writing 1: Getting Started
Maybe it’s been a while since you did any writing. It’s one of those tasks that can slip during busy teaching times, especially with the load of getting classes online. Sometimes when you’ve been away from a project for a long time, it can be difficult to find your way back in. The following four steps are a proven method to get you writing again.
Plan: Don’t even think about sitting down to write until you are sure what you are going to work on. The more structure you can give your writing session the better. Do you need to settle on which project or chapter or section to tackle first? Write up a dot-point skeleton? Transcribe notes into a document outline? How about sketching down topic sentences, like you used to in high school? Anything you can do to make the task of writing easier is worth doing.
Schedule: Open your diary, find a one- or two-hour block and schedule in your writing session and do not give this time away. Set an alert half an hour beforehand so that you can gather your materials, turn off your email and other distractions, make coffee or tea, and get in the right mindset. Set a modest goal. Anyone can write 500 words, right? (For reference, this tip of the week is about 500 words). Perhaps you’re behind on a deadline and 500 words seems like nowhere near enough. Remember: big projects get written in regular small blocks. Next time you schedule a writing session, you can aim higher. For now, just commit to starting.
Write and see what happens: Rather than pressuring yourself to write deathless prose, try to remain curious about the process, and about what you can do if you try to write today. If you find you can’t get the words on the page, say a sentence aloud but simply: the way you might explain something to a smart teenager. Then transcribe that. You can always fix it later. Can’t think of the right word? Don’t try to force it out: put a pair of brackets around a not-quite-right word and come back to it. See if you can get to 50 words. When you’re there, see if you can get to 100. By the time you’re at 200, you should have the momentum to achieve your goal for the session.
Celebrate: When you are done, don’t just rush back to your email. Stop and look over what you’ve written and notice what you like about it. Plan where you might go next time you schedule a writing session. Then go and reward yourself with some chocolate or cheese (or chocolate-covered cheese if that’s your thing). You did it!