The background
My name is Sophie, and I’m going into my fourth year of English and Linguistics at the University of Aberdeen. Here is a blog about the first three weeks of my Summer Internship in the department of Research & Innovation.
The ‘Talking research’ project
The ‘Talking Research’ Project
I am leading the ‘Talking Research’ project, which aims to develop a series of video interviews of senior academic staff. These interviews will be used in workshops and hosted on the University’s Staffnet pages.
As part of the project, I will be interviewing several different members of senior academic staff about their experience as a researcher. The goal would be to draw advice from their experience to guide future researchers in the University. The series of videos will ideally lead the audience through the different steps of undertaking a research project. These are: writing a proposal for funding, managing a research team, working with researchers from different disciplines and external stakeholders, and ensuring the impact of research outside academia.
What have I been up to so far?
The first few days of my internship have consisted of reading (a LOT of reading) about the topics we are hoping to cover in the interviews. By the end of the first week, I felt pretty confident about these subjects. I have also started drafting a list of potential interview questions.
I met up several times with Claire Hawes (Researcher Development Advisor and my line manager) and Ruth Banks (Impact Officer) to discuss the organisation of the project and the potential interview questions. We also got to meet Rikki Gutcher and Richard Browne. They are two members of the Video Services team who will be filming and editing the ‘Talking Research’ videos.
Getting a hang of it
Every time we discussed the project as a team, I got a clearer and clearer idea of how I wanted to conduct the interviews and plan the editing. I have also scheduled interviews with staff members of several different disciplines (Medicine, Nutrition, English, History, Music, and hopefully Psychology and Engineering). At this point, we have booked enough interviews to cover all the topics we wanted to address in the videos.
What happens next?
We will start filming the interviews starting next week. I am planning to have a final draft of the questions ready by then. Once the filming is done, we will have a few weeks to edit the videos and complete the project. I look forward to working alongside the Video team and seeing the final results of our work.
My Thoughts
Working on the ‘Talking Research’ project is incredibly interesting. It allows me to explore another side of the University and its academic research. I’m particularly attracted to the field of filmmaking and audio-visual content creation, so it’s amazing for me that I will be developing this video series from start to finish. I wanted to end this blog by thanking the members of R&I for their warm welcome, and by wishing my fellow interns all the best for the rest of their internship!
Thanks,
Sophie
