17. Professor Robert Walker: The importance of seeing research as a process, honest communication and building a network of critical friends Bumps In The Road

Professor Robert Walker is an Emertius Professor in the School of Education at the University of East Anglia, with a Sociology background that has taken him all over the world. Although we do discuss failures - Rob openly shares a couple of high profile projects that suffered from communication breakdowns - one key topic of conversation here is teaching. Specifically, how can we encourage our students – undergraduate or postgraduate  - to develop a questioning mindset, an understanding of the research process and an acceptance of this process as an imperfect journey, within the traditional boundaries of a time-limited degree programme. Throughout this episode, Rob often talks about, somewhat caveats his examples, with saying ‘it was a different era’ in research but I found his thoughts around communication and teaching to be really relevant to the work I do today, I hope you do to.

More here: https://emmaelvidge.wordpress.com/2021/10/04/episode_17_robert_walker/