Weeeek 1

Hi. This is an introduction...

Here, is a picture of where I was, at point 0 of my process. I was traveling from Cairo to Amsterdam, and I had to miss the "team-formation" session.

Sadly, it prompted a rocky start to the minor. I was placed in Team 2, under the topic of discrimination and intersectionality. I was relieved, because it actually turned out to be the topic I was interested in the most out of all the teams.
But... I still felt a little nervous. Studying Arts and Culture Studies at Erasmus University, I was used to a very specific, rigid way of working. Assigned readings, lectures notes, assignments, group presentations and final exams.

The way I was learning was always very structured - with assigned deadlines and submissions. This was very different for me, but that was the point from the start. I wanted to try something completely new, that was more focused on learning by doing, and I was excited.

This is a Hotglue-blog of my process. It is not bound to a specific theme, narrative or
aesthetic. I chose to do so because I wanted it to truly reflect my personal experience of
engaging with transdisciplinary research. It was random, where I would have sudden outbursts
of inspiration and ideas, as well as sudden outbursts of what I would like to call a
creative-block - times when I just had nothing to add or say. It was quite a rocky journey
for me, kind of like taking a road trip without assigning a destination.
There are so many roads that you can take, yet none of them are paved. You have no map and the possibilities seem endless - and you're not the only one driving. You feel nervous a lot of the time, worried that the path that you suggest to take might be the wrong turn.

But as the time passes, you finally come to terms with the idea that there is no wrong turn - that the wrong turn is simply yet another road to discover. Its a part of your journey, your roadtrip. With every road you take, you realize that there's always something new to see, something you haven't seen before that you can learn from. And thats exactly the moment when you start to enjoy it - and you finally understand what they mean when they tell you

trust the process.

Week 2

Reflection

- How are you learning from, and combining scientific, embodied and/or visual knowledges?

At the beginning, we started a research phase where all of us just looked into the topic of smart cities and how they can essentially harm community, and shared the sources we found. Focusing on academic work from key scholars such as Saskia Sassen, and random articles on the internet about smart cities laid out a great framework for me. It was only a while later where I realized how important our research phase was, since it helped us gain ‘expert’ knowledge when it came to thinking about smart cities, urban development, etc. It was quite new for me to be applying scholarly knowledge, in the sense that it I started, with my team, to use this knowledge and these theories and relate them to the reality of living in Rotterdam, by finding more articles on Rotterdam as a smart city. Then we started looking into institutions here that are working on the smart city project. This part was particularly interesting for me – we weren’t just doing research on a subject and applying it to the city we lived in, but also finding real-life players interested and working on the same topic, with whom we can have a conversation. Also, looking at visual archives of Afrikaandervijk, the neighbourhood we initially decided to focus on, was another new and interesting method of doing research for me. Looking at photos that represented certain tensions related to our project made me realize, further, how very real and problematic the issues we were focusing on were. It was a nice way to shake things up after looking at text and websites for quite some time. In addition, going to Afrikaandervijk and having an almost 2-hour conversation with a high school teacher about the issues children face in the neighborhood and how the neighborhood itself is situated against the rest of the city was the most inspiring for me. Talking to other people that can help give us real insight into the situation made me realize how we were no longer just some students doing a minor, but actual ‘researchers’ that are collaborating beyond the walls of an educational institution. I also believe that doing this type pf ‘primary’ research helped me train myself a lot in that arena.
How are you influenced by academic, artistic and societal practices in this process?



- How are you experiencing the transdisciplinary collaborative process?

My journey with the transdisciplinary collaborative process was a little complicated at first. I wasn’t sure what was expected of me me from my teammates, nor how I can meet those expectations. I wanted to always try to make sure that work is more or less equally divided, which was quite difficult because everyone had a different way of working and we were eight team members. This stressed me out a lot at first, so I decided to step back from that thought and just let it be: let the dynamics of this collaboration to manifest organically in the way it was meant to. Because I realized that people will bring different things using different ways onto the table, in terms of research and ideas, and maybe others will take that idea and give back.

What I found the most important when it came to learning how to collaborate, was learning how to simply hang out. Personally, meeting up with my group for dinner/drinks to simply get to know each other more was a crucial step in the collaboration process. It provided us with a framework on which we were able to build trust and start, from there on, our collaboration process. It was a necessary step that helped us embark on a friendly, learning-journey in a collaborative manner. And I believe that it was why this project feels like something completely new to me: in my past team assignments, we would simply start a google doc and a WhatsApp group, divide the work, set deadlines and meet them – we ‘worked’ just to get a grade – but not to learn from each other, think outside the box, get to know one another, speak freely and brainstorm creatively. Sometimes, one issue with brainstorming creatively was that I felt like we as a team would get carried away with all the ideas we have and end the meeting without actually deciding on a path. A few days later, I find myself confused with what exactly we should be doing. So my team and I decided to try and always end the meeting with a quick wrap up, or a list of To-Do’s.

Sadly, however, the new partial lockdown has changed my experience of collaborating quite a lot. I enjoy seeing people in reality and working with them in person, and leaving feeling inspired. However, I’m doing my best to try and not feel alienated and work even harder.


- How do you collaborate with your fellow students, tutors and societal partners? What have you learned from them, and what are they learning from you?

Whenever I hear or see the word “collaboration” I think of our brainstorming sessions in person. I believe collaboration is not only when I share and exchange ideas with people, but also how I listen to that idea and add something to it, and maybe someone else can chip in and add something else to it. I also think a big part about collaborating is to listen and pay attention to what another person is saying, and to not get carried away with your own ideas and your own excitement. From my fellow students, I have learned quite a lot. From just having conversations with my teammates, I noticed we all work and approach a situation quite differently. But that opened my eyes to new ways of thinking and doing.
I’ve always been used to ‘following instructions’ when it came to academic requirements. However, meeting up with my team and brainstorming together, sharing ideas and knowledges made me realize that there can be different, more out-of-the-box approaches that don’t necessarily mirror instructions. In addition, I had never worked on a project in which I was required to contact and/or collaborate with other key stakeholders beyond fellow students. Thus, I wasn’t familiar with how to deal with it until we got to the phase of contacting people and meeting up with them to discuss what we were working on and I started learning a lot from my teammates.

Also, my tutors helped me a lot. Whenever we would go and just talk about where we’re at as a team and what have we been up to, we were always asked questions that somehwhat “rocked our boat”. I learned that sometimes, when things are a little too perfect and seem to run so smoothly, it’s a sign that its time to stop and critically reflect on the process/results. Posing critical questions when it seems like the best time to just keep going because things are so smooth and ‘just the way we wanted them to be’ is the most crucial step in the process. Because it should never simply just be getting from my point A to be point B and calling it a day. It should be a constant transformative learning process that does not stop, but just changes and poses new thoughts and ideas, while still focusing on the main subject. If it were that simple, we wouldn’t have found new things to tackle and think about, and we would’ve been done with our project weeks ago! So meeting up with my tutors for me meant a restart on our project. ‘Rocking the boat’ also made the project, for me, a lot more realistic and made me feel like we weren’t just students, but societal partners. Especially when having conversations with societal partners.


- How are you contributing to the creation of a productive working environment for your team?
I always try my best to be present every step of the way: go to every meeting, every interview, going to every dinner or drink plans we make, missing no zoom sessions and replying to all the WhatsApp group messages! I feel like its the most important thing – more important than sharing articles or being the first to contact a societal partner, for example. I would be missing the point completely if I was thinking of productivity in a vacuum: that it is simply being the first to finish tasks or having the ‘lead’ in the process. In a team, I believe the most productive environment is when we are all present, when we all listen and exchange ideas. Being a team member who gets everything assigned to her/him done yet being inactive or always busy is what might hinder productivity, in my opinion. It is just as important as getting something done. Because in this collaborative transdisciplinary process, the whole idea is the process – not the end goal. So being active and showing up and sharing ideas, talking and just simply being present is what I focus on the most.

- How do you, or do you hope to in the future, contribute to society with your disciplinary knowledge expertise?
I hope to be able to get different key players from different societal projects to work together in a transdisciplinary manner. I realized that the process is so important because of the things you continue uncovering along the way. Whenever you feel like you’re done, you’re almost at your goal or finally moving towards it, you stumble upon something new that makes you realize that you should try a different approach. It’s the perfect way of contributing to society, because every step of the way you uncover another factor in the situation that you didn’t consider before.


Transdisciplinary process leads to the big confronting question: how can I contribute? How can I be of value?

Meeting my team for the first time, I was pretty nervous. I was hardly talking - so I simply sat there and listened. We talked about our studies and our interests in turn, and how we can utilize the knowledge we accumulated into our project. We stressed quite a lot on intersectionality and discrimination, and it was a great flow of conversation. I was still quite shy, and I didn't contribute too much to the conversation, but I knew that that wouldn't last too long... I joined our first rotating tutor meeting from home, during which we took a practical step into our project - we entered the research phase. We agreed to look into the works of Saskia Sassen, a prolific author in the field of urban sociology, to provide a solid framework that will help us plan out the next few steps.

Despite going through the literature we agreed upon, I was still feeling very alienated from my team - I had just came back from traveling, and hadn't settled in yet, and there was a lot going on. I was also trying to get used to this new way of learning, in which I had to help set up the structure of our work unlike having it set up for me by an educational institution.

THE ICE BREAKER: STALLES

Meeting everyone at Stalles over drinks and food was my personal, official starting point of my process. It was a great night, we talked a lot about our experiences of discrimination here in the Netherlands.

I was finally talking comfortably and sharing my own experiences as well. As we started relating this to our project, we got to the topic of Smart cities and encoded discrimination.

I was very intrigued by it, and diligently agreed that we should look into it... I didn't know exactly how smart cities worked just yet, but I was eager to look into it more and learn something new. I guess this was a form of embodied knowledge,

THE STARTING POINT!