Reading, Writing, Making Sense: Research for Beginners

The process of conducting research is constantly shifting, with pressures across academic disciplines to ‘produce’ knowledge, and corresponding technological developments allowing researchers to short-circuit the more tedious parts. The set of exercises focusing on key stages of research here refuse to do that, and focus instead on ways of approaching knowing. 

The starting point is reading, both to form a broad basis to what one is interested in, and then – through skimming and close reading of relevant aspects – to focus on articulating a specific question to which one wants to find an answer. Reading seems intuitive but, just like writing, involves unlearning before one is able to engage honestly with a text, and use it to inform one’s understanding. Drawing connections, appealing to visual and textual tools, is the next step, followed by working with ways of expressing them that are careful not to overclaim knowledge. The nature of the engagement remains descriptive, but to this already established foundation it brings an emphasis on logic and reasoning and clarity of expression, along with basic conventions of ethical acknowledgement of others’ work.