When one is awarded a grant by a major research body, obviously accountability is a 
very important consideration. To that end, activities have to be logged on the poetically-named but very definitely serious Researchfish website. All big scholarly funders use it, asking for details of such matters as publications arising out of the research, further funding, engagement activities (there’s quite a bit I can enter here!) and so on.
At first sight, it’s a bit intimidating, but once I’d downloaded a list of “Common Outcome Types with sub-types”, and crossed out the columns in which no-one would remotely expect me to have outputs (Medical Products, Interventions and Clinical Trials, or such Research Tools as Biological samples, or human models of mechanisms or symptoms), it didn’t look quite so bad. I do feel a bit like a little fish in a big pond compared to people winning major awards to find cures for horrific diseases, design new space rockets, or solve the greater political and social conundrums of our age. Still, one has to start somewhere!
So, my activity for the rest of today will be to go through the list I’ve already compiled, and add the various presentations, blogs and guest-blogposts, and so on, and just see how far I get! For one-and-a-half days a week over 13 months, it looks okay – well, in my opinion, at any rate! As I’ve said often enough before, watch this space.
Karen McAulay, Musicologist 