PhD Orals Document: Querying Analyses of Collaboration

This essay, submitted by University of California, Irvine Anthropology PhD students Angela Okune and James Adams in partial fulfillment of their requirements for advancement to candidacy, explores a more collaborative approach to the genre of the orals document.

This essay--designed, analyzed, and compiled jointly--looks at how science and technology studies scholars, anthropologists, indigenous studies scholars and feminist scholars, among others, have thought about collaborative formations across the research life cycle.

Angela has approached the document with a particular interest in looking at the variety of ways that scholars have understood and sought to address ethical concerns to do with qualitative research, especially that which seeks to be “open” to the public and more “collaborative.” How has “collaboration” been explored and theorized across scales and sites to realize more equitable/egalitarian ways to do research (as afforded by new technologies and scholarly infrastructures?)? What limits and challenges have been identified? What ethical considerations have arisen and how have scholars sought to address them? For Angela, this is one of three essays: a second essay looks at efforts towards decolonizing the African university here; a third essay queries Science and Technology Studies in/on Africa here.

James has approached the document with a particular interest in thinking about collaboration as “working with” and also working against varying interests and goals. He is particularly interested in understanding this in terms of political praxis and action.

Angela and James devised a shared analytic structure, which they used to jointly query a set of works (find the full bibliography here). They have also documented and reflected on their own collaboration here.