A new type of scholarship
How do we define impact? When I met Micah Vandegrift, Fulbright Schuman Scholar and Open Knowledge Librarian, I had already been asking myself this question. How could I use my unique experiences as a Fulbright student in Vienna to inform a wider audience about a topic that has broad global implications?
My research goal while in Austria has been to expand my understanding of how policies that enact swift integration measures can have long term benefits for both refugees and host communities. Since arriving in Vienna in September as a Fulbright combined research grantee, I’ve had the opportunity to experience Vienna in multiple ways: as a policy researcher roaming the city to interview government and civil society leaders; as an English language teaching assistant working with diverse, largely immigrant youth; and as a visiting master’s student interacting with young adults experiencing the labor market in very personal ways. These three facets of my identity in Vienna have helped me gain a unique understanding of the many challenges minorities face when integrating into Austrian society, challenges similar to my own observations as a minority in the U.S.
Through these experiences, the question has remained: how can my findings in Vienna make an impact in the broader global socio-cultural movement, one in which migration is a key driving force?
This is where it starts to get fun. In a hotel lobby in Luxembourg during the EU-NATO Fulbright Seminar earlier this year, Micah Vandegrift and I discussed the notion of public scholarship and translation as a vehicle to reach a wider audience on topics that have growing implications, for research that is not specific to one single discipline. He introduced a new concept to me, one in which disciplinary journals are no longer the be-all and end-all of scholarship, but instead, findings can be disseminated through non-traditional avenues. Finally, I began to understand that my definition of impact does not necessarily have to exist within just traditional academia.
Here we are, a few months later, beginning a collaborative project that we are “attempting to define/not define as a dual disciplinary, non-publishing, translative/interpretive, public scholarship experiment” (Micah said it best). In the coming months, we will use this space as an exploration of “translation as scholarly communication” through our respective knowledge in very different academic disciplines.
So where do we begin? I recently submitted my preliminary research in SocArxiv, titled “Lessons learned: The longitudinal effects of Austria’s labor market integration policies on Bosnian refugees,” which will be updated with results in the coming months. From here, Micah and I will begin a back and forth discussion inside this text, using open annotations and synthesizing our findings on Medium. The goal is to create a cross-disciplinary research piece and disseminate it in ways that achieves both of our professional goals.
Stay tuned for our upcoming scholarly dialogue, where Micah and I will simultaneously challenge each other through our complementary interests while also challenging the status quo of academia and impact.
