It has been a long time now that i am trying to write and constantly manoeuvre the findings chapter of my thesis, it is like driving a big van where you need to have awareness of its size and its edges without really being able to see them. I realise that the analysis and the writing are two activities that happen simultaneously. My methodology and particular research process has not got clear-cut steps of analysis (like in grounded theory for example) and sometimes this makes me feel on edge about what i am doing. On the other hand, the more i get into doing what i keep doing intuitively and the more i read about how others did a similar process, it all feels right somehow, although quite stressful. It is again the whole reaction to the unknown and the surrendering to the process. I have been doing it for so long now, i am kind of not that scared of the deep sea, i am a good ‘swimmer’. It is just that it is exhausting and i find that i need to be sleeping longer hours, as if my body and mind need to switch off…and then, more dreams come in my sleep, so not much ‘escape’ really! i am now more comfortable with the idea that this journey is to be taken very consciously and i see how i transform in the way that i am reflecting on things, the researcher in me keeps maturing and growing…and the practitioner too, i see how sharp i am with supervising the Diploma students at work. The whole process is so eloquently discussed by my supervisor in his 2005 book, where he calls it ‘inner data analysis’; i have been reading this section again and i am re-visiting the writing of the findings chapter, still a lot to do, still decisions to be made there, i try things and see if they make sense, my meaning-making process is quite deep at present…i immerse, incubate, illuminate, explicate and so on, all over again, variosu times, the whole research process has its own temperament and mood – i try to respect the natural flow but also remain disciplines, as much as i can, whilst looking after myself with short breaks or nurturing treats (good food, sleep, going for a walk, seeing friends, dance, exercise)

This is just a quick update as it has been a while that i haven’t written in this blog. My PhD clock is ticking fast and i am concentrating on thesis writing which is quite demanding, therefore i find that i am so immersed into this text that adding text to the blog has taken a back seat…it is so useful though for me to be finding resources from earlier readings and processes in the researh recorded in here, in this virtual space of my research, that i can copy and paste and work on further in the main body of my thesis…i feel like a chef  (researcher) at the moment that i am cooking my stew (thesis)…i am experimenting with the ingredients and creating new dishes for each chapter. Good food needs slow cooking at different temperatures…this is where i am at right now…i just hope that i dont put on too much weight (phd writing makes me hungry…especially for chocolate …lol…i bought a second-hand exercise bike, it is in the office, i saw the cleaner of our department ‘flirting’ with it one of these days…she said that she needs one of those too!)

It has been so fortunate that our University library had a copy of an excellent book: Papadopoulos, R. K. (ed) (2003) Therapeutic Care for Refugees: No Place like Home. London: Karnac

this volume has contributions by various authors around trauma and therapy with refugees and asylum seekers (forced migration) which is not my area in the PhD. However, i have found some very interesting ideas and discourse around the concept of ‘home’ and recorded some quotes that can go into my thesis. Papadopoulos offers an excellent account, drawing from ‘Home and Homer’ which connected me to my own Greek background and the symbols and stories of departure and homecoming in my nation, i have been thinking about the links between the individual and the collective level and all the transgenerational heritage we carry at a psychological level. This is an area of experience that comes into my PhD topic but it is quite subtle and i have been feeling it at a gut level without having the words to clearly articulate it. Today’s read has given me food for thought in all the ‘cooking’ an currently doing in my relationship with my data, myself as researcher and my writings.

It  has been nearly a month since i wrote a post in this blog, this having to do mainly with some health-related issues that have run me down but also cause i needed to withdraw from the public sphere and immerse in the interview transcripts that am working on…it is a slower and more time-consuming process than one may think!

I had some very positive feedback by two participants in response to the refelxive summaries of our interview that i had sent me which gave me a further boost to continue as i do, even if slow, i want to respect my heuristic pace and also make good justice to the transcripts.

A fellow research student was asking my advice about how to go about heuristic data analysis, in order to help her make a start with handling her own interview data. I am recording my email response to her below, which was agreed also by our supervisor that it is a good understanding of heuristics and good way forward: … Read more »

My seeking for clarity in the PhD phase i am into at the moment, i have been reading literature that i found either in the library or though online searches and realised that the next step for me is to write the Literature Review of my Phd thesis, as it is formed through the main themes of my findings. It has been some time now that it was clear to me that it is not easy to do the Literature Review, given that there is not much written on the particular angle i am taking. So, i had arranged for meeting with my supervisor so discuss some dilemmas and strategies i could follow to approach the matter. I looked at 2 doctoral theses (one on existential migration conducted in UK and one on the evolving cultural identities of immigrant psychotherapits conducted in the US) and identified what could be relevant to my writing. Although i have strated reading voraciously at an early stage of my phd, i was advised not to do a Literature Review chapter then so that i could be less pre-occupied around what i was seeking and also cause there is an argument for doing one once the data gives you the angles that require attention. I have now made a list of 22 main themes that come out of my data. … Read more »