claudine_c

My supervisor didn't hear me say 'Um'. I didn't wave my hands too wildly. I got the timing right. I made eye contact. I didn't offend anybody with my challenging conclusions. No one shouted 'Bingo!'

Oh, and I got a decent mark.

I would have preferred not to shake so much before getting up to talk, though.

http://claudine-c.livejournal.com/53265.html

I pre-ordered the three books of PHD Comics. I collected them from the post office today. My final report is due in three weeks. If the report doesn't get submitted I'll blame Jorge. :-)

My presentation of my master's research is on Thursday. It's not quite a thesis defence; the research report is only (only!?) ten thousand words and has taken just under a year.

I have my 20 slides (20 minutes) and eight pages of notes; I've rehearsed a couple of times; but I have this nagging suspicion that I don't actually have anything new or interesting to say. The most terrible moment will be at the start when all these people will be looking at me and I have to start talking. Then they'll discover that I'm really stupid!

Today is a public holiday. Due to overtime last week I also took Monday and Tuesday off. My supervisor would like the first draft of my final report tomorrow.

These are some of the books I should have been reading as I work on my report:



These are some of the books I have actually been reading or browsing:



It's not as bad as it looks, but I do seem to be lacking some energy for this project.

On Thursday and Friday I attended a conference on Researching Refugee Health organised by the Refugee Health Research Centre at La Trobe University. “Health” here is a broad term, encompassing social and mental as well as physical health. This conference was attended mostly by academic researchers, practitioners (doctors, psychologists, community workers) who do research, and postgraduate students, but also by hospital staff and DIMIA (Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs) officials.

The DIMIA staff were mostly observers at the conference but were asked publicly about what they thought of the criticism of their department that comes from many refugee advocates and researchers. One of them said that criticism inside the department is strongly discouraged. This is not surprising in light of what the public has learned from the Rau and Alvarez debacles. It was encouraging to see that some DIMIA staff wanted to engage with these debates (at what personal cost, I don’t know) and I hope that positive change is possible within the department.

The conference featured a mix of keynote speeches, case study discussions, workshops and informal discussions. The four themes addressed by the keynotes were longitudinal study methods, researching detention centres, ethical dilemmas in refugee research and community based action research. Many of the participants said that research among refugees in Australia is often motivated by an urge to do justice and right wrongs, motives which are sometimes at odds with the mythical “objectivity” that is supposed to be the basis of academic and scientific research.

Another complaint was that there were all these intelligent, sensitive, highly qualified professors and doctors publishing reports on the harmful effects of the government’s asylum seeker policy, and this research had no effect on government policy. In the face of such apparent futility, some people argued that the value of research was in witnessing to and validating the lived experiences of refugees, a function that many refugees themselves valued. Deborah Zion drew parallels with Holocaust testimony in her exhortation to avoid collective dementia.

Sandy Gifford and the other people behind the conference wanted to determine recommendations and points for action rather than just let the conference end with a whimper. There seemed to be a consensus that there is a need for some kind of network to allow better communication between the many people working with and researching refugee issues. There were also a few of us who thought that the academic bias of such conferences could be tempered by more community involvement, and by engagement with artists and performers who have powerful ways of bearing witness.

The organisers could not have anticipated this, but the timing of the conference coincided with Petro Georgiou and other Liberal members of Parliament threatening to defy the government with a private members’ bill which would soften the government’s policy on asylum seekers and detention. An agreement has been negotiated which meets most of Georgiou et al’s demands, with the glaring exception that indefinite detention has not been rejected. Time will tell how much of a difference this will make to the lives of asylum seekers.