I’m currently reading a new book in the Routledge Insider Guides to Success in Academia series:
Be Visible or Vanish: Engage, Influence and Ensure your Research has Impact (Routledge, 2023)
The authors are Inger Mewburn and Simon Clews; since I’ve followed Inger’s work for a number of years, I knew it would be good, and I got it for RCS Library recently.
It’s an approachable guide, and the kind of book you can tuck into a bag or pocket to read at free moments during the day. This morning as I drank my pre-work latte, I was reading the chapter on making academic small-talk, and being ready with an answer to the inevitable question:-
So, what is your research about?
(A reasonable question in any situation!)
It particularly resonated for me this morning, because I take up my honorary Ketelbey Fellowship at St Andrews tomorrow. Not only that, but a family member had been asking me the same question last night! What are you studying there? Why there? How are you going to benefit from the experience? It wasn’t intended as preparation for the sort of questions I should be anticipating, but I nonetheless took it as a prompt to think carefully about how I shall be introducing myself when I meet new colleagues!
I’ve also heard this described as an ‘elevator pitch’ – though in my case, I would need the elevator to travel more than one floor! As I’ve said before, the title of my recently-submitted book doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. However, it outlines what my research has been about in recent years so I have to be able to trot it out.
- A social history (yes, that describes it well)
- of amateur music-making (make no mistake, that’s what we’re talking about – it’s not generally about serious, cutting-edge classical music)
- and Scottish national identity (this is such a big deal, that it’s inextricably interwoven throughout the whole book)
- [And then there’s the subtitle!] : Scotland’s printed music, 1880-1951 (I’ve been looking at the output of Scottish publishers during this era, which proved much more interesting than even I had ever imagined. When I got to 1951, I got to fever-pitch excitement. You’ll have to wait for the book to find out why!)
But, back to the questions of last night. I’ll be revising the book when it returns from the reviewer(s). I’ll also be investigating a particular aspect of my research that still merits even deeper investigation. I’ll be exploring a bigger, richer library collection than I usually have access to, and I look forward to engaging with a lot of different research scholars, hopefully gaining fresh ideas and maybe ideas for new directions or collaborations.
Most of all, I’ll be settling into my academic role – yes, I know, I’m a seconded researcher back in my home institution, but it’s new for me to be a Fellow for a few months – and I’ll be thinking about my future ‘second career’ as a researcher once I retire from music librarianship next summer.
Now, where was I with Be Visible or Vanish …?
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 