Louie’s Doctoral Research
sharing our learning
Attending, Responding, Becoming: a composite doctoral submission, using multiple modalities
My Doctoral journey has been quite a ride, made more so, because I threw myself into undertaking my research in a way that, whilst coherent with the complexity thinking paradigm I was embracing, was simultaneously counter to academic convention. This made for a sometimes thrilling, yet sometimes also deeply uncomfortable, experience as I found myself frequently confronted by the spectre of shame, believing I was risking failure. Oftentimes, I wondered if I was extending too far beyond the bounds of what could possibly be deemed acceptable in The Academy. Yet, I made it through! I have been awarded my Doctorate – so I can proudly, playfully, joyfully embrace the title Doctor Louie Gardiner.
Below, I make available the entirety of my composite submission. You will find extensive, diverse, rich material that will carry you into visual, poetic, kinaesthetic and narrated realms, as well as expected intellectual terrain. All that I share, is far more than simply images and words. I am opening myself and my life’s learning to whoever ventures forth to engage with it and me. I do so, in service to helping you to extend and re-humanise your experience as a living-learning human being in this world, wherever you are; whatever you do.
To grasp the fullness and magnitude of what is available – pace yourself! Let your fascination sustain your momentum; and allow your stamina to help you follow through! Engage with what is in range for you and move to what draws you in. As you digest and learn, what is in range will expand for you. Enjoy what resonates with you on each encounter. Embrace what you resist, long enough to see what (be)comes of doing so.
My requests of you:
- If you learn and draw from this magnum opus, I would love to hear from you.
- If you want to challenge me or find out more, do reach out for a chat.
- If you draw from and make more of what you discover here, I ask you to safeguard your own trustworthiness by referencing me and my work.
- Finally, please also freely share links to these pages so that others may benefit from what may be accessed below.
My entire PhD submission can be accessed through the University of Hull’s Thesis repository. Importantly, once you have downloaded the ‘Prezi Next .exe’ files from the repository, you will be able to run each of the presentational components of my submission without internet connection. The two Intellectual-Theoretic contributions can also be found on these academic sites:
Before you tumble headlong into engaging with the guts and fruits of my research, I urge you to read the following two short documents.
The first is an essential guide – one that you might wish to keep close as you move through the components of my submission. The guide sets out the components and suggests a pathway to follow. However, in reality, you can start anywhere and find your own way through.
The second document, from my external examiner, Alan Rayner, offers a brief synthesis of his understanding what I have done/achieved.
Navigator-Narrator
I present my research through a composite submission that comprises different states/ways of being/presenting. I call these statewaves and you will be served by all of them in all that follows. Some of the hyperlinks will take you direct to online ‘animated’ prezis. You will need a strong stable wifi signal or cabled internet connection to experience these in their full, unfettered fluidity.
The first of my statewaves – Navigator-Narrator – offers signposts, guide-lines and summaries. Aesthetic-Poetic and Visual-Kinaesthetic infiltrate her terrain to help introduce the discrete fruits of my research.
Do not expect Navigator-Narrator to explain. You will find fulsome explorations and explanations elsewhere, in the tumbling torrents and waterfalls of words, brought forth by Intellectual-Theoretic.
Navigator-Narrator offers landing places and visual artefacts – anchored reminders to which you can return, whenever the text-heavy torrents of Intellectual-Theoretic threaten to overwhelm you.
Follow this link to encounter (00) Navigator-Narrator.
Visual-Kinaesthetic
Knowing arises in and through us before knowing we know. In other words, your being~doing body gets ‘it’, before your thinking catches on and before your mouth knows what to say about it!
Yet, so often, we forget that the entirety of our beings is implicated in all we encounter and experience. Visual-Kinaesthetic taps into and leverages aspects of ourselves that enable us to notice and move to action, without (always) needing or resorting to words.
In the links below, Visual-Kinaesthetic conveys two frameworks/models as well as an over-arching introduction to Presence in Action.
The two frameworks offer different lenses for accessing all else that I am making available to you. I encourage you to watch these several times. Leave space between viewings. Use them as meditative encounters rather than intellectual wrestling. There is so much embedded in and embodied by the imagery and the detail. Give yourself time to muse, ponder and wonder about what you see, hear and experience. Give your non-conscious processing capacities time and space to embrace, fragment and integrate.
Find links to the three prezis below:
- (01) the Systemic Research Framework – facilitates the framing of my undertaking; helping me to situate, navigate (and share) what I was doing. Through this framework, I distil how I came to appreciate what was informing and enforming what I was doing, how I was doing it; and how my deeply personal approach fitted into the philosophical, theoretical and practical landscape of academic research.
- (02) the Symmathesic Agency Model – situates the fruits of my research within the philosophical paradigm of natural inclusionality, recognising that wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we are everywhere we are. In other words, we cannot escape ourselves, nor hold ourselves outside of any situation in wihch we find ourselves. Admitting this, brings coherence to – makes sense of – all the ‘becomings’ (I call them my ‘abductive fruits’) that my research brought forth.
- (03a) Presence in Action – the praxis that sits at the core of my self-inclusional research.
Intellectual-Theoretic
If you are wedded to western traditions of education and scientific endeavour, you will likely be thinking that Intellectual-Theoretic’s contribution is the REALLY important stuff of this PhD. You might also be anticipating a predictable format (i.e. what a PhD should look like), with content explaining and reflecting on WHAT I did, and telling you all about what I discovered/delivered. What you will actually find here, is so much more than – and very different from – that!
My Thesis and its ESSENTIAL partner document (an a-typical Appendix) represent a kind of evolutionary research, in which I was living through and documenting my knowing as it was ‘becoming’ in and through me. In engaging with these two weighty documents, I counsel you to expect something that flows, twists and turns – more like a novel, than a post-hoc, clinical research account. So…
Imagine setting off on a voyage not knowing where you could/should /want to end up?
Imagine not knowing what you could or should do to get there, because you do not know where ‘there’ is, or even if there is a ‘there’, there?
Imagine not knowing how to ‘undertake it’, because neither you nor anyone else has documented journeying this way before?
Imagine wondering and wandering about; getting stuck in entangled knots; finding yourself lost in seemingly pointless cul-de-sacs; having to revisit old ground; losing track of broken threads; reluctantly relinquishing what suddenly becomes redundant; and following and flowing with fast running streams, full of exciting possibilities?
Imagine not quite knowing why you are doing what you are doing, in the way you are doing it, until suddenly, all becomes clear?
If you have a definite destination in mind; if you think you know how these TWO coupled documents should be; then you will surely be thwarted and feel frustrated. Instead, I invite you to open yourself up to what I surrendered to… and to revel in all that might come alive in and through you as you do so.
If you are ready and willing to jump in to experience whatever is evoked and invoked in you along the way… then perhaps you may have found the playground for you… with access to other willing wander-ful playmates!
Download (04) My Thesis here.
Aesthetic Poetic
Strange though it may sound, I began writing poetry the year that I started my PhD. Until that point in time, I had not been drawn to reading poetry, nor particularly, to writing it. Yet, during these seven years, I found I was digesting, processing, integrating and expressing myself in poetic prose and poems. Early on in my doctoral inquiry I realised that this form of expression was bringing and revealing an important quality/dimension to all that was unfolding, even though I could not ‘rationally’ explain why, nor in what ways. So, when the urge to express myself in this way arose, I let myself follow and flow where it carried me. As my poems began to amass, I realised how crucial this Aesthetic-Poetic form was, supporting all else that had been ‘becoming’ as my research progressed.
Some poems are deeply personal; some reflect on past and present relationships. Others show me grappling with social, theoretical and philosophical concepts. All bring me closer to understanding, acceptance, resolution. Yet, whilst uniquely tracing aspects of me and my life, I believe these poems may help others reflect on themselves, and more generally on the human condition and the kinds of struggles many of us experience in our lives.
At some point, I recognised that these poems had a legitimate place in my doctoral submission and yet also, had a life and trajectory of their own. I set up a publishing company; purchased some ISBN numbers and worked out how to self-publish. So, I am delighted to be able to share these poems in two forms.
You can download my (06) poetry anthology. This has hyperlinks to audio files so that you can listen to the poems being read by me.
Alternatively, if you prefer to feel the weight and texture of a book in your hands as you are reading (as I do), you can purchase a full-colour printed version via the Lulu store. Each poem has a unique QR code you can scan, so that you too can listen to the audio rendition.
