Aisha was six months pregnant and had recently moved into a house from an apartment in London to have more space and be closer to USE while she was a research student (August 2013). During this period, she was in the middle of what the university refers to as a year of ‘probation’ for a PhD, for which she was completing a probation report. This probation year had been challenging, as she had experienced periods of illness during the earlier months of her pregnancy, and she had also had to negotiate maternity leave with her supervision team (which also meant applying to extend her PhD probation year). The probation report she was writing, could also be described as a research proposal: one which needed to be approved by USE’s business school for her to achieve full PhD status. To complete the proposal, Aisha was drawing on an assignment she had done for her Master in Research
which focussed on ‘knowledge creation’ in the fashion and textiles industry in Sri Lanka (Aisha’s written text, August 2013).
Aisha, who is Sri Lankan and has Singhalese as her first language, had travelled, and continued to travel, to Sri Lanka, to collect her data for her research. This was one factor which affected the places and spaces in which she worked. Below, is an extract from Aisha’s Master in Research assignment on ‘knowledge creation’. In the extract, she is describing the focus of the research she was carrying out in Sri Lanka:
Consequently, the overall purpose of this research is to explore the existing
knowledge in the firm, knowledge creation capabilities (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990) and how this new knowledge leads the firm to generate novel ideas through generating and disseminating organizational knowledge and experiences. (An extract from a written text discussed in an interview with Aisha, August 2013) The above extract highlights the kinds of ‘business processes’ Aisha was investigating in relationship to ‘knowledge’ in her chosen industry. The verbs she chose to use - generate and disseminate illustrate the types of processes she planned to observe and record – processes which spoke of the different ways knowledge moved through the people and operations that constituted aspects of the textile and fashion industry in Sri Lanka. Aisha’s interest in the ways in which ‘ideas’ were ‘generated’ and ‘disseminated’ in the fashion and textiles industry, particularly with regard to the ‘sportswear’ sector in Sri Lanka had arisen from both practical and academic experiences. In Sri Lanka she had studied design at degree level as well as work in the industry as this was formally required for her degree. After pursuing her studies in design in Sri Lanka, she relocated to the UK and acquired an undergraduate degree in design in London.
The places in which Aisha worked and wrote about her research had specific social and cultural implications. For example, the factories in Sri Lanka– sites in which Aisha was collecting data – were places where Aisha worked more frequently with the male
employees. This reflected, according to Aisha, the nature of the factories, where the women employees tended to be on the floor working as machinists and the men had better access to the ‘technical’ side of the industry. It was through this technical side that Aisha felt more able to engage with the industry’s knowledge creation processes. Below, Aisha
foregrounds the sportswear industry’s tendency to create ‘technological product innovations’:
The researcher [here, Aisha is referring to herself] chose to study the sportswear industry for three reasons. Firstly, it is a relatively small industry characterised by technological product innovations and a long product development cycle, in comparison to short-term, seasonal product development (fast fashion) in the apparel industries. The second reason is that it requires knowledge from diverse industries. Thirdly, the researcher has a personal interest and experience in sports and technical textile design where she found these distinctions between innovation in sportswear development and traditional fashion designing process. (An extract from Aisha’s Master in Research assignment discussed in an interview with Aisha, August 2013)6
Aisha’s experiences of conducting research and writing about her research are strongly coloured by the places and spaces in which she was living, working and writing. First, she was pursuing a PhD which required her to travel between two different countries, and this meant working across different cultural and social contexts – and these changing spaces brought with them a range of gendered practices.
Second, her personal circumstances, which changed at various points throughout her studies, meant that the domestic spaces in which she wrote changed too. For example, during her research, she needed to find ways to write while she and her husband
accommodated her parents in their small flat in London – and she would then need to do the same when she moved into a house. The following extract highlights some of the challenges Aisha experienced related to space, while her parents were visiting:
[Aisha’s parents] were giving me kind of, disturbance, but then they realise…then
they understand, they say 'ok, what are you doing all the night?' because I'm my person, I'm doing everything in the night. Then after a few months they realised my
6 Aisha was drawing on this Master in Research to write the research proposal for her PhD probation
pattern and they don't basically disturb me because I was doing this one, my research, the MRes. (Interview with Aisha, August 2013)
Third, as she was pregnant in the summertime, she chose to move her research-focussed writing to a room with greater privacy where she could ‘open the door' to get fresh air:
A: but I use the conservatory now because I'm …so I need to open the door J: the door, you need the fresh air…
A: yeah, and in the summertime, conservatory [laughing] feel like so comfortable,
but basically I don't want people around me….
J: ok, that's great so, at the moment, even though you’re pregnant you're still
working a bit at night?
A: Not night, but mostly day time I'm doing now. (An Interview with Aisha, August
2013)
Aisha’s movements in space and time reflected her desire to keep writing academically in changing circumstances – both in terms of securing a place which was cool and
comfortable, but also provided her with privacy. Her writing space tale illustrates sharply the kinds of changing spaces postgraduate research writers may be required to carry out research and write within. The tale also highlights the different ways spaces can be imbued with social, cultural and personal implication. Finally, each space required that Aisha engage in some kind of re-invention, so that she was able to continue to write, as well as manage the changing circumstances of her life.