When I first told my friends and fellow scholars about my project one question kept coming up, time and time again: what even is Into the Light? Looking back, I am almost comforted by the fact that even programme directors found it challenging to fully put into words. The issue, I’ve come to understand, is that Into the Light cannot be fully defined by itself: it is a bridge and therefore is shaped by the landmasses it connects. This ambiguous nature became one of the major difficulties of my research: how do you evaluate something which, in its very definition, refuses boundaries? Nonetheless, I’ve realised that’s also what makes this programme so special. Its rejection of the typical hierarchies is precisely what found myself drawn to focus on.
My review of the literature was extensive though my methodology was not something I could uncover within one of the many, many tabs open on my browser. Into the Light’s specific case hadn’t been looked at in this way before and so I had to construct a customised method, taking bits from many other methodologies and shaping them into something of my own. In the end, I was left with an approach that retained both quantitative and qualitative aspects; one which couldn’t reveal any objective certainties, but showed something I came to find far more interesting: patterns of narrative. In hindsight, I think this was the right choice. My research retained a human voice, and for a partnership so focused on subjective realities and the importance of voice, it would have been an error to box Into the Light into mere figures and objective truths.
Ultimately, I’ve come to believe the beauty lies in ambiguity. Much like in the arts, the multiplicity of interpretations - the expansiveness of this question and these results - is exactly why they are valuable.