PhD in Numbers...

Kate Morley
12 hours ago
3 min read

As someone who continues to feel like an interloper in academia, I'm struck by how much needs to be quantified and measured. It feels like when it comes to how academia functions, numbers are still 'king'. This is despite my research using a qualitative ethnographic methodology, which explores beliefs, behaviours, voices, and experiences.

When asked for a 'research update', just saying "I'm still in my analysis phase" may seem a bit 'woolly' and inefficient.

As I come to the final phase of my PhD (as well as a cliff edge of funding), I thought it would be useful to take stock of what I have been up to in the last 18 months (in numbers...):

314,678 words in transcripts
32 interview transcripts
31 HOURS of interview recordings
(all of the above has been reviewed 3 times)
111 Documents and policies that have been reviewed and analysed
9 Research-based meetings attended/observed
15 Presentations given
2,773 miles travelled for research activities.

Disability Studies is a notoriously difficult field to find funding for or to shoehorn into an unyielding academic structure; add to this the need to accommodate the experience of crip time for myself and my participants, and it feels that 'doing' a Critical Disability Studies PhD within the 'typical' timeframe was always going to be a challenge.

I dream of futures where academia has the flexibility to honour the pace needed for Disability Studies, to avoid fishbowling and extractive research practices... an academia that authentically wants to hear and centre the voices of disabled people, and values the expertise and insights of disabled researchers; a future of crip academia; an academia that is built on anti-ableist and anti-normalcy ideologies and is "connected to community, solidarity, outspokenness, and defiance" (McRuer, 2019).

Despite all this, I feel honoured to have spent the last 18 months talking to some fantastic people who have shared their experiences of nature, their efforts to find space with nature, and the insights that could help us in these times of biodiversity collapse. At times, these discussions have brought tears; at others, roars of laughter. Those conversations have been had on clifftops, in urban woodlands, next to rivers, in front rooms or cars looking out of windows. Witnessing the joys that nature brings, witnessing the harms that are being done as well as deep discussions of the 'context of crap' that so many people are living with in a fragmented society where narratives of hate and division try their best to undermine feelings of belonging and relationships with place and nature; also reflecting how society often determines where different humans and non-humans 'fit'.

Images: K.Morley

River Stour with sky reflections. Quiet corner in Poole Park with circular seating. Graffiti on a pedestrian crossing linking two park areas.

How the legacy of political, policy, and personnel churn directly impacts the decision-makers who are working to find space for nature. Hearing how the awe and love of nature for decision-makers motivates them to do more with less, 'when money's too tight to mention', and land use is increasingly being driven towards building non-accessible and non-affordable housing.

It's been an immense privilege to experience nature with my participants, and as I begin to pull the strands of their insights together, I hope I can weave a picture that explains what nature means to disabled people.

As one of my participants shared:

"I feel much better when I’m outside. It’s the air that you breathe, it’s the fact that you’re not indoors stressing about jobs, it’s a complete and utter outpouring of my whole self into a park or a garden. It doesn’t matter where it is, as long as there’s birds or bushes or people, I do find it much better. So nature is a big thing for me, yeah, nature means a lot to me. It's been a lifesaver."

I would like to send huge thanks to my participants and my supervisors, who keep me motivated and allow me the space to still be creative.