Communities of Research

Published 15 May 07 10:54 AM
I'm always fascinated by acknowledgement sections, in books and in theses, as a textual trace of the narratives and experiences underlying the formal, often disembodied, academic writing following that introduction. Seeing the acknowledgements section from a friend's recently submitted thesis emphasised to me how the acknowledgements section is one space where we can talk about the communities of scholarship we participate in, in an affective as well as intellectual way. Another reminder - for me anyway - that research is always embedded in a human context.
by Karen.Hall
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# wayne.griffiths said on May 15, 2007 1:21 PM:

Are you currently writing your acknowledgement section, Karen? Or is it just a coincidence?

# Karen.Hall said on May 15, 2007 2:05 PM:

I wish! I'm saving my acknowledgements section as a treat for after I have a complete draft of the thesis. I will admit to mentally drafting it out as a form of procrastination, but that can also be motivational - along the lines of 'all these people want me to finish, so I'd better'. Have you done yours yet?

# wayne.griffiths said on May 15, 2007 4:24 PM:

Funnily enough, I finished it in December last year, as one of the last things in the draft. I dated it "December 2006" as I had been flipping through a few theses written by students at BTH to see what sorts of people they thanked (presumably in a similar way to this post of yours). But I have since changed the date to a simple "2007" as I would think it a bit odd to have a date on the front cover so different to the one in the acknowledgements. I could honestly make such a date change, because I think I changed one word in it! (It wouldn't feel right otherwise, putting a false date) From what I was of Swedish acknowledgements, they tended to be fairly short, well, at least shorter than mine. Apparently, mine is approximately 500 words! I must have had a few people to thank I guess.

# Karen.Hall said on May 15, 2007 4:42 PM:

The longest acknowledgements I've seen went for about 4 pages, and it was very thorough to an almost amusing degree. I think I'll try for short and sweet (unlike honours, where I rather pretentiously managed to thank the entire 'feminist scholarly community', whatever that is) but I guess in someways I think there is an almost moral obligation to show that we as researchers are interdependent on others both within and without the academy.

# Matthew said on May 18, 2007 1:10 PM:

Make sure that Bailey gets a mention for not eating your homework too often :P

Matt

# CHill said on May 22, 2007 12:49 PM:

Yeah, I'm fascinated by the acknowledgements page too.  My personal favourites are the ones that are short and sweet.  I've read some that make you want to throw up because they are so gushy.  One of my friends suggested doing an 'anti-acknowledgements', to those people who actually hindered her work.  I'm not sure if this would work though, in her case, because one of those was a supervisor!

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About Karen.Hall

I've recently submitted my PhD thesis, titled 'Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality', for examination. In the meantime, I'm teaching in the discipline of Communication Studies at UWA and starting a new project on medievalism and media through a Whitfeld Fellowship.