I’m at home, and after these 4 months in Sydney I’ve spent the last few days taking stock (quite a lot of that has made its way here, through the blog). I’ve taken stock of activities, meetings, seminars, trips, things written, things started, and things that will probably still take quite a while to finish. But there is another part of a research stay that is much harder to capture in a report or on a timeline: the people who make space for you.
And I’ve been thinking a lot about four of them.
I’ve met, talked with, thought with, and even become friends with many more people, but these four are particularly important when I look back at my time in Australia.
I didn’t meet Lucila Carvalho in Australia. Lucila is my friend. And that changes the story completely. Having her here has meant having, thousands of kilometres from home, someone with whom I didn’t have to start from the beginning; someone to have by my side, and someone to be there for in return. But it has also meant being able to share our academic lives differently: spending time at her university (The University of Sydney), getting to know her world more closely, teaching her students, and continuing to have conversations that start with research and, fortunately, end up being about absolutely anything else.
Sarah Prestridge and I have been working together for years and I also think of her as a friend. We’ve shared projects, ideas, discussions and many hours at a distance. This time, I was able to go to Brisbane, spend time at Griffith, get to know the place she works from, and share some of what I’ve been thinking about during these months. There is something special about finally stepping into the everyday context of someone with whom you’ve been building things for so long… and understanding a little better the space that makes her so special, and of which she is always such a wonderful ambassador.
Luci Pangrazio, on the other hand, I finally got to meet in person. I had known her work for a long time and our academic paths had crossed in different ways, but we were still missing something apparently as simple as sitting down together. This stay gave us that opportunity. And it reminded me that, however many things we can do wonderfully well at a distance, being in the same place still matters.
And then there is Simon Buckingham Shum.
I first met Simon almost twenty years ago, and I have a fairly vivid memory of that first encounter… I made the biggest fool of myself in English I have ever made in front of him (and believe me, there have been several contenders). What I remember most, though, is how badly I wanted to understand the way he saw some of the things that already mattered to me back then. And I also remember a rather more unlikely hope: that one day we might have enough time to talk for him to understand how I saw them too — and, moreover, to find something valuable in that perspective.
Twenty years later, one of the reasons I wanted to come to UTS was precisely to have time for those conversations. And I think we did it. Fortunately not because we now think the same way —fortunately, we don’t— but because over these months we’ve had the time to try seriously to understand where the other is thinking from. Educational Optics has probably been the most visible part of that conversation: four seminars that forced me to put in order ideas I had been thinking about for a long time, and that also changed as we talked about them, discussed them and looked at them again.
Simon made space for me at UTS when I arrived. But what I’m taking away with me is not simply having had that space. It is the feeling that, after so many years of wanting to understand his perspective better, and hoping that one day there might be an opportunity for him to understand mine, we have found a place from which we can think together. We’ve talked a lot. We’ve seen beyond each other’s work.
I suppose that is why, after almost four months, I think academic mobility has much less to do with moving than it might seem. In the end, you can buy a ticket, cross half the world, change offices and fill a calendar with meetings. But a research stay really happens when, once you arrive, you find people with whom you can inhabit those spaces: friends who were already there, long-standing collaborators, people you can finally meet without a screen between you, and new relationships that are given enough time to become conversations.
So please, to anyone starting a research stay: make friends. Have conversations. Lots of them. All of them.
I’ve been incredibly lucky with these four. Thanks to them, I’ve met and talked with people I hope I’ll keep crossing paths with, others I hope I’ll have the chance to work with, and still others whom it has simply been an honour to have had the opportunity to say hello to — Lina, Karen, Peter, Simon, Jan, Tim, Margaret, Roberto, and many others…
Thank you, Lucila, Sarah, Luci and Simon, for making space for me in Australia, you will allways have one in Murcia.