Organising my own LiA – self leadership and problem solving 

For my second summer of my scholarship, I wanted to organise my own leadership in action project, to do work within the LGBTQIA+ community, following on from my research last summer which focused on experiences of Asexual identities and mental health. However, finding a place that would take on a volunteer with limited skills for a short period of time was very hard. This was further complicated by me having no previous travel experience and not being very willing to go far away due to my lack of confidence as well as personal health issues that made it hard for me to travel and stay on track during my time at university. 

One of the things I have had to learn the hard way through organising this was to adjust and manage my expectations and consider what I can offer and what I am capable of. In the end, I spent my six-week summer volunteering in David Doyle’s medical psychology research lab at Amsterdam University Medical Centre (UMC) working on a few research projects centred around LGBTQ+ mental health. This aligned well with both my interests in LGBTQ+ experiences and in reducing stigma and widening access to healthcare for marginalised communities such as these. It also gave me the chance to apply the research skills I had used both in my first summer of the scholarship and over the course of my degree. 

Research and Leadership 

During my time at the lab, I worked on three main projects, each lead by different people who took different approaches to this. 

My main focus was assisting on the screening process for a systematic review of literature around depression rates in transgender identifying individuals with a PhD student being supervised by the department head. During screening, a big thing to consider is inter-rater reliability – so we wanted to make sure we were making the same decisions about what should and should not be included without discussing everything and influencing each other too much. This meant that while I was able to ask questions whenever I was unsure on general rules in the protocol on what to include, most of the time I was using my own judgement – which forced me to be confident in my decisions. Over time, this project became the one I found easiest to work on since over time I became more comfortable working as a part of a team, and we were able to bounce ideas off each other. I think in this case my co-worker and I acted more as co-collaborators on the project. 

In addition to this I also worked on creating a framework for thematic analysis focused on experiences of gender affirmations for those on gender affirming care using interview transcripts. I found this a bit harder – while I was given guidance on how framework construction would work and on the overall objectives of the analysis, I had forgotten how hard it was to do inductive analysis – since what you produce is based on your own interpretations of meaning and I was lacking some of the important context since I had not been present during interviews. This project felt more like I was being set a brief and being shown a more traditional leadership but also being allowed to explore things in my own way. 

Finally, I was also given the chance to do some preliminary analysis of a large dataset focusing on loneliness in asexual identifying individuals. I was given the freedom to decide which variables I thought would be interesting to look at for this which was very fun and challenging due to the lack of literature – and the analysis was even harder as I wasn’t familiar with the software. Overall I was given the most freedom and therefore also the most responsibility to self-lead on this project – and I did make a few mistakes – but I was able to set up the protocol for a proper analysis by a more experienced person and being given the space to go out on my own and try things and mess them up was a very important thing for me as someone who is still new to research and wants to continue into it in the future. 

Community building 

Something that helped me greatly was how friendly everyone was towards me during my time in Amsterdam. The family I was staying with were very kind and invited me to take part in meals when people were around and even watch the football with them (which was a new experience for me). Also, the people in my office were all happy to talk and treated me like any other person working there despite my age and inexperience. Being in most days, I was able to get to know everyone a bit and felt more comfortable asking for help with basic things as time went by.  

Additionally, when I was by myself on days when work was empty or no one was home, I still pushed myself by going to events alone and met lots of cool new people that way – especially at queer events. I was incredibly lucky to be working in an area where there is such a large LGBTQ+ community who are protected by laws and are therefore able to have so many open queer spaces, and this definitely made me feel more at home. Having access to these spaces and legal support and protection is something all members of the community deserve, and this is something I feel passionately about and would like to do more work on in the future. 

How I will take this all forward 

All these different experiences have been and will continue to be valuable to me as someone who is going to conduct her own research as a part of my dissertation next year and hopefully also continue to engage in research in future.  

Also my experience of self-organising my own project and sorting transport and accommodation and settling in a new place in a context where I am the only new person gave me more of an idea of what life might look like post-university – and how I may cope with it as someone with anxiety and depression – which are unfortunately not going away. This probably all sounds a bit negative, but this experience did give me confidence and hope for the future, and I felt I was able to regain some of my independence that I have lost over the last year due to periods of mental ill health.  

While I know my LiA arguably may look unchallenging compared to those undertaken by my peers – I am still proud of what I was able to accomplish both in terms of the work I produced and what I was able to do for myself.  

What I would have liked to have done differently 

Unfortunately, I was unable to work directly with the community as much as I would have liked – in future I would like to do more work which has a visible and direct impact – for example by being involved in more queer spaces, or services which look to improve minority mental health. 

I have had some experience in these in the past via my work with a queer charity student club night and I missed the direct interactions I would have with the community, but I also liked doing research work rather than events management for a change.  

Other things I got out of it 

While organising my own LiA, I emailed various academics involved in LGBTQ+ research – many of whom responded positively and were more than happy to have a chat with me over email or videocall (or in one case one of them even bought me a coffee!)  

This made me realise I have absolutely nothing to lose by reaching out to people and made me feel more confident in myself. As a result, I contacted the author of a primary source I used in my own paper- who I am now working with on research into asexuality and mental health. I never would have expected this to happen to me and I am so excited that I get to do more on this topic and that people are interested in what I have to offer despite my relative inexperience as a young person. In this regard, I don’t think I ever would have thought of doing that before doing the scholarship program – because I wouldn’t have thought that I had anything to offer.  

I would not have managed to complete my LiA without the help of my fellow Laidlaw scholars. Being able to talk to other people doing the same thing was a great source of support and made me feel much less alone when I was doing my project and were also helpful in finding a place to stay – which was difficult due to the current housing crisis. I will forever be grateful to my fellow scholars and hope we will continue to know each other in the future.  

Many thanks to everyone for reading, and best wishes for the future. 

Jasmine