Atrapos.eu » General

the Dr. has arrived…though ”the journey” continues

atrapos — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:00:45 +0000

Today i had a successful viva exam! It lasted 2 full hours and it all went very well, the examiners were well satisfied by my defense. I experienced it as a stimulating, fair and enjoyable experience…i feel short for more words at this stage. I am wondering what is the ”life” of this blog from now on…the PhD is awarded, yet the journey I embarked on continues…as is life, THANK YOU…time for rest.

Happy Birthday!

atrapos — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:49:26 +0000

This was in interesting week, i did a very interesting presentation at a Research conference with a colleague with the title: The use of metaphor, poetry and art as agents in the qualitative research process…the audience responded very warmly and there was a spell of creativity that was provoked, for all participants, including us, the presenters!

the author of this blog has her birthday today. I make many wishes that are dear to my heart for this coming year…one of them is that by this time next year, i will have finished my PhD succesfully and will be full of ideas as well as opportunities to offer its contribution wherever it is my calling…happy birthday to me and the birth of a new phase of writing towards producing a good thesis!

Happy New Year!

atrapos — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:28:33 +0000

i have spent the past 10 days of the year in Greece, visiting family and exploring the processes that take place inside in terms of home, culture, belonging and so on, for one more time, from the stage and phase that i am right now…I am contemplating on the year that just ended, so many experiences, so many challenges, learnings and so on. I welcome the New Year that just arrived… My wish now is that i complete this PhD research withing 2009, soulfuly and sucessfuly…greetings to all!

Research is Cool…(?…!)

atrapos — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:50:59 +0000

Well, handing the mass of research data and trying to figure out how to do analysis and the like does not feel very ‘cool’ thing to be doing right now, it requires a lot of concentration and it definitely takes more time than one imagines…However, i want to make note of an initiative taken by a PhD psychology student at the University of Edinbrough who created this site called Research is Cool aiming at promoting reseach networking worldwide. The website can be seen here: www.researchiscool.com

I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by the PhD demands at present but am sure there will be a day that i will be thinking about it all and realise that these research years have been indeed a cool thing to do!

transcending one’s internalised culture? (Ho, 1995)

atrapos — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:51:29 +0000

Not sure if i agree with the argument below but it is something to dicuss in my thesis:
The Counseling Psychologist, Vol. 23, No. 1, 4-24 (1995)

Internalized Culture, Culturocentrism, and Transcendence
David Y.F. Ho – University of Hong Kong

Internalized culture is introduced as a psychological, rather than anthropological, construct most useful to counselors. It addresses explicitly both between-group and within-group variations resulting from individual differences in enculturation and helps to sensitize counselors against stereotyping. The problem of defining cultural boundaries arises, with serious difficulties in defining three specific classes of cultural phenomena. It is argued that there is a basic continuity from intracultural to intercultural understanding. In a sense, all interpersonal encounters are cross-cultural in nature. Accordingly, all counseling requires an awareness of cultural processes and the transcendence of one’s internalized culture.

Mid-summer check in

atrapos — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:46:36 +0000

Well, it has been a hectic few weeks, i have been working on various things related to the PhD in one way or another (readings, writings, meetings, dialogue with peers, identifying next steps, supervision, literature searcher etc etc). The last week has been particularly busy as i am flying to Berlin tomorrow morning to present a paper at the XIXX International Congress of Psychology about Counselling in the context of the Greek culture. so much work to do really and at the same time so many ideas are floating in my head about how i can use my research for my carred development post PhD. BUT….i really have to focus this year and say NO to other activities in order to reallhy focus on my main job which is THESIS WRITING.

I see that the months are passing quickly, the writing process in heuristic terms cannot be rushed really and i have to now give my best shot to produce a good enough, rigorous PhD Thesis. Whatever i have done during the PhD years will not show its value if i now do not manage to make a good synhesis in the Thesis i need to produce, this is what i will be assessed upon anyway…so, i am off leaving UK for a while and i will be recording my process as and when web access is possible…here i take off soon!

update

atrapos — Sun, 18 May 2008 21:35:40 +0000

just a quick input in the blog. still working on research transcripts, data analysis, communication with interviewees and refreshing my reading on methodology so that i can start writing a draft chapter, parallel to preparing my presentation/paper for the conference in Berlin. Also, i have found somebody from the PhD group who has graduated now but has good understanding of issues related to heuristic research and its process to interview me in order to find a way to articulate more comprehensively my story for the auto-ethnographic/biographical chapter i will include in the Thesis and actually record the conversation so that i can then write the narrative in a reflexive way. I am glad that i found this way forward in relation to that, it is like a ‘midwifery’ kind of exercise, will write more about it when it actually happens. Back to work now!

The hidden ‘politics’ of my PhD topic…holding my ancestors/family tears

atrapos — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:33:53 +0000

It is Good Friday today (at least for the Catholic parts of the world…the Greek/Orthodox fellows will celebrate Jesus victory over death about a month later…) and it has been a quite emotional week, in terms of being encountered by ’synchronistic’ incidents and conversations that reveal the underlying ‘political’ dimension of my PhD topic. As i am talking about cultures and mobility, i see that there is so much we carry from our histories, some of whihc still present, and they operate at an unconscious level at least very powerfully. And as my supervisor puts it in one of his writings: “I do know from my psychodynamics in families that some children do carry unresolved psychological material from their families and end up wrestling with problems that don’t really belong to them” (West, 2006 – The Friend’s Quarterly). This statement seems to expand to national and collective dimensions aslo, especially when certain countries have suffered a lot of violation and trauma that appears to be carried through from generation to generation, often in very subtle ways. And of course, where all this eventually ‘belongs to’ is a whole different story, as in my eyes at least, we are all connected. And even when a specific experience is not directly lived by an individual, when it comes to national collective experience with huge impact, the psychological echoes can be very strong (more…)

Race Equality Scheme at UoM

atrapos — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:12:16 +0000

I have recently had a lot of conversation and incidents around race, discrimination etc and am glad to receive the update of the Race and Equality Scheme conducted at my University here in Manchester (see report here), having as an aim to eliminate racial discrimination, promote understanding of religious and cultural beliefs and promote equality in these areas.

weekend in ‘BLondon’

atrapos — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:19:24 +0000

I came back from a weekend in London and i have to say that i was left with many reflections around ‘culture’. We had this joke between me and my friend that the city shall be really called BLONDON, due to the ammount of blonde women we saw there, it was as if the whole Eastern Europe has immigrated! London feels like a different country, as if its not UK, you hardly hear any english on the streets and the variety of races and ethnicities encountered is phenomenal…there was a sense of inner freedon in all that, sth that i have felt on other occasions around the experience of being an immigrant myself in a country with so much diversity. I feel that my attention and awareness around culture and identity are heightened due to this PhD topic that i am working on…i was recently saying to my supervisor that i feel my eyes getting bigger and bigger, as if my vision expands around what culture is and how it affects and relates to our sense of being that sometimes i want to close them down, to stop seeing, it is as if it nearely hurts. When in london, i was also aware of the matter around sub-cultures in the same country…the urban as opposed to the rural, the crowded as opposed to the serene…and mainly, the fact that the ammount of nationalities that live in london is so big that itis like a miniature of the globe….this is so different to Athens, for example, where i grew up….when i am travelling to Athens now, after living in the UK, i feel like going to a village, although it is a capital city of 5 million population. i guess this also related to the different mentality, although things are changing indeed, maybe in ways that my awareness cannot even realise or hold as yet. There is less tolerance around self-exppression in Greece. On the other hand, there is more warmth amongst people, or certain ‘restrictions’ keep things more safe…so much to reflect on really, will let it rest for now

‘Love’ your research (the metaphor of the abyss)

atrapos — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:21:50 +0000

Love day today and at university we had this seminar about ‘loving’ our research…:-). I shall admit that doing a PhD is like having a partner, in a love and hate relationship almost…there are moments that u are inspired and ‘in love’ with the whole thing and other times that it all gets too overwhelming and you nearly feel like throwing everything out of the window…i see that i develop ‘compassion’ towards myself through the research process and ofter the Thesis gets personified into a ‘being’ that i relate to in different ways. I see that in other PhD students also when we talk about that process which is actually comforting (more…)

6-month PhD progress report

atrapos — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:33:44 +0000

As i have been preparing a 6 month progress report that is due at our School’s administrator, i realised how much i have done really! It has been a hard period in terms of finding the partcipants, sometimes having so much travelling involved, also due to all the emotional responses that this topic triggers for me…i feel i have had excellent support from supervision and peers though, i thank all those involved…so, this is just a quick line to say well done to myself for what i have achieved so far! and also try to be kind to myself for the challenging time ahead with the analysis and writing.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

atrapos — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 02:53:07 +0000

Narrative quote

atrapos — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:31:13 +0000

I attended the CRG meeting earlier today and wrote down an interesting quote related to narrative inquiry. Here it is:

“When the story of our life doesn’t make sense to us, we need to explore alternatives in identity…to fashion a new myth” by McAdams, 1993

Life still happens…

atrapos — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:14:12 +0000

It’s been weeks since i have written an entry here and there are a numver of reasons (life has taken over, am busy with personal issues, part of me is resisting the heuristic process, i had some holiday time away from technology, national tragedy with fires in my homeland etc). However, i just wanted to say hello to my blog and promise will come back when the PhD process (and my writing) is ready to flow again…soon

Made a couple of contacts

atrapos — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 11:59:31 +0000

Just a qucik update on the blog before i go on holiday and internet access gets difficult for a couple of weeks. After a wave of procrastination, resulting from accululated tiredness and a sort of ‘re-entry shock’ i experience when visiting my home country after living abroad, i put my head down and send a couple of research related emails. One was at a potential interviewee participant in Greece, who was recommended by a friend. The other was to Prof. M.M.L in relation to my PhD progress and discussing about co-authoring a paper maybe. I have to be patient during August given that most of us are on holiday, and i need it as well…but i have a couple of interviews lined up for end of August, early September. I need to get myself organised with the data. It’s good to get into the analysis soon after each interview and do the transcripts. Otherwise there is the danged that i will feel drown under too much stuff and lose hindsight about how to handle it….am off for a swim now!

In transit…

atrapos — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:13:41 +0000

The process of travelling back and forth between host (UK) culture and my original (GR) one is full of conflicting emotions, mixed feelings, a state of limbo. I can see more and more that there must be some links between individual attachment styles/patterns as formed in early childhood and the extend of psychological resilience of cultural adjustment and sense of belonging, or even in relation to change in general., This is a personal observation that was also implied in a couple of research interviews and i need to explore more through a literature search…I will leave it there for now, try to get used to the temperature changes etc and will come back again, after some proper sleep and once i have properly landed

paperwork

atrapos — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:19:41 +0000

i havent used the blog for a few days as the server was being updated etc. At the moment i am dealing with some paperwork on my professional side. it is summer and any work with research participants is a bit more difficult due to holidays period etc. i guess i need to retreat myself a bit and find a different pace after the last couple of months that were too intensive. will arrange tutorial with William before my hols to touch ground and plan ahead…need sunshine

Catching up with myself

atrapos — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:40:49 +0000

Soon after the review panel and the conference presentations i found myself very tired, it was the usual ‘falling ill’ process for a couple of days due to the fact that i was at an intense mode for quite a while. Hence, i havent written any post in this blog for a week or so as i have been catching up with myself on other areas. At the moment i am withdrawing a bit from reading and writing as i feel a resistance in producing text. However, there are a few ideas about co-authoring papers for publication, one with William and one with Steph. All will fall into place when i get some rest, am sure

Happy Birthday!

atrapos — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:59:16 +0000

My birthday today….I want to view it as a new beginning…a new phase in my life and the research process. We had a long PhD group supervision meeting today, Tracey brought in a cake and a candle (how sweet of her!). I also had some Lacta greek chocolate that i brought from Greece and kept for this day as i know that William, our supervisor, just loves it . There was a lot of discussion in the group around Heuristic methodology, power dynamics, politics etc and how those inform our thinking and research writings. I feel i have to look at both the unconscious (whenever visible) and conscious processes that the topic brings up for me. I may write a critique on Moustakas’s Heuristics…i am questioning a lot the impact that the research brings to the researcher and how to manage that, some new balances and safety nets needs introducing, i think