Posted on by mauro95cesar

Day in the life, in Portugal

Remote based work has taken on a whole new level and flavour for me since June 2021. After much deliberation, I decided to complicate my life somewhat and visit my family in Portugal. In preparation for this journey, I bought myself a new laptop for remote based work and set out to continue with my PhD as if I were back in South Africa.

If I go back to the early stages of my PhD at the beginning of 2020, I had learnt that I would have the opportunity to work with members of National Geographic’s Okavango Wilderness Project and The Wild Bird Trust in the Angolan Highlands. Unfortunately, the global pandemic placed our fieldwork in Angola on hold. Planning international field trips for extended periods of time has become challenging in the current climate. This created an issue for me; I had limited data to work with and I was no closer to getting to my study site. I discovered Google Earth Engine (GEE) and was able to teach myself how to code during 2020.

GEE is a platform that allows me to collect open-access geospatial data from my study site, only needing my laptop and a stable internet connection. With this added advantage of remote data collection, and with guidance from my supervisors, we had agreed that my PhD would be completed by publication using GEE. I have since used GEE to map extensive peatland deposits, provide drought assessments since 1981, and will assess vegetation response to fire since 2000 in my study site.

Working remotely in Portugal has been a great experience thus far. I am surrounded by family members, which has meant that I have not felt alone in the entire time I have been here. Communication with my supervisors has continued as normal on online platforms and my work continues to progress.

Some difficulties have come in, I do miss my parents and brother. As always, family members that have not seen you in some time want to spoil you. Much to my delight, I have visited some beautiful places all over Portugal, but this does distract from my PhD work. This requires me to become more disciplined and set out stricter schedules.

Coming to Portugal has given me a sense of freedom. As much as it pains me to say, in South Africa I usually did not have the opportunity to come and go with absolute ease. I often find myself walking the streets late into the night, simply because I can. But I do miss SA, I miss watching live rugby, eating red meat, Robinsons spices and the bush.

During February 2021, the SAYAS blogging team were encouraged to create our “Day in the Life” video, sharing a day in our PhD lives in South Africa during lockdown Level 3. It was a great way to showcase what a typical workday is like for us all at home. For this month, we were encouraged to make version 2 of our “Day in the Life” video. This version showcases a typical day for me here in Portugal. The video showcases quaint street views, a short guide on how to deal with the results section of a publication and a live tasting of some delicious pastry.

Posted on by leahjunck

My Organised Chaos

The intention of this vlog is simply to walk you through my organized chaos when it comes to research and structuring my thoughts. While I have my moments where I heartily envy other peoples’ organisational process and structured thoughts, I think that, at the end of the day, we all have to work out a research strategy that works for ourselves – and ourselves specifically.

I have just started a postdoc at the Institute for Humanities in Africa at UCT, exploring the social impacts of artificial intelligence on health – hence the book you see in the video. For me, it is a slow process of decapsulating myself from my PhD work on dating apps, which had truly acquired the status of something I was living and evolving alongside with in my life. Weaning myself away from it towards a related-yet-different aspect of coded technologies is not something that happens overnight for me. Especially given that my thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork and the stories it tells will never simply be filed away.

Similarly, wrapping my head around a new topic or vantage point takes time. I try to read all the things that tease my curiosity further, meaning I surround myself with loads of books, and virtual heaps of articles, blogs etc. Especially at the beginning stages, I struggle to explain my thoughts in a way that is coherent. There is simply too much I find interesting, and I need to take my time to simmer all the input down to a more tangible focus – the question that will help me navigate a complex social phenomenon. In the meantime, you will find that my notes are all over – in different word documents, in my various notebooks (which I’m very fond of; I need to be able to physically hold on to my thoughts at times!), sticky notes and so forth.

The compulsion to make triple sure everything has been noted down properly and securely probably also comes from a bad previous experience I had. Just before the submission deadline of my Bachelor of Social Science Honours thesis (many a moon ago), my laptop was stolen in a house break-in. This was before I knew about ‘clouds’. I didn’t have a proper internet connection at home either and only made occasional copies on my hard drive. Alas, never again will I rework an entire project based on some earlyish drafts last minute!

Back to the video. It only reveals the surface of what looks like pure madness. However, as time passes and I develop a clearer train of thought (for which, of course, I have a special notebook), things become much converged and my notes more cohesive. Perhaps not for everyone who might be able to decipher my handwriting, but for me. And I then start introducing discussions around the topics with people around me, which helps giving the developing story in my head a more distinct motif once again.

I do have moments when I’m fed up with all of this along the way. This is when I clean up my documents, make sure they are labelled and sorted in a way that still makes sense to me and that my latest notes are readily accessible to me. To-do lists always make me calmer, too. Every now and then, I’m trying out something new, like Microsoft OneNote, which I mentioned in the vlog. I do still need my handwritten notes in addition, though – they also have the advantage that one can cross off completed tasks off with real vigour.

Whatever the process that you have found to be working in your scholarly career thus far, I’d encourage you to focus on that and refine it in a way that makes sense for you. Value it, cultivate it, and – most importantly – acknowledge that there are times when nothing works and you just need to take a step back and do something fun!