PC2 – The choreography of scientific writing

Lecturer: Birgit Peterson
Fields: Scientific Writing

Content

The epistemological process of academic working and particularly the processes of scientific reading and writing involve a variety of materialities, mindsets and spaces. So, the ability to adapt these complex processes in a situated way, combining different materialities and different mindsets methodologically to create harmonic rhythms and step sequences of working is crucial for further development. This “choreography”, the arrangement of materialities over time and space, influences the results and the success of scientific writing and academic work.
In this practical course we are going to reflect and share our individual “choreographies” of academic working. Although all 4 parts built on each other, it is possible to join for only one topic as well.

In the 1st lecture, the focus will be, on how we create spaces and adjust it to the needs of our diverse academic working processes. What are these spaces constituted of? How do we arrange stuff and staff to design a prosperous atmosphere? And how do these different spaces and influences our cognitive processes, enabling different choreographies of thinking and working?

In The 2nd lecture we explore our reading behaviour. First, we discuss, how we are framed by different reading space and materialities, Then we focus on how we switch them and our mindsets to better interact with literature and data for different purposes. Finally, we look on promising strategies to thrive our successful reading processes.

In the 3rd lecture we will extend these explorations to our writing behaviour, focussing on the one hand on the diverse materialities that are involved in embodying thoughts in verbal and non-verbal products, and how we change our choreographies when shifting between drafting, rewriting and revision processes.

The 4th Lecture draws form the former ones but additionally stresses the roles of rhythms, patterns and the scrambling of elements for the whole composition: How does the harmonic compilation of spaces, materialities and mindsets, and the rhythm of switches within them overall, constitute a successful choreography for our personal academic working processes?

Lecturer

Birgit Peterson

Affiliation: University of Vienna
Homepage: https://www.germ.univie.ac.at/birgit-peterson/