Shreya, I totally relate to the challenge of putting sources in conversation with each other. I think this is especially difficult when sources are in different disciplines and seem to be talking in parallel to each other because of the limits of their methodologies. Trying to find ways to nudge sources into conversation has definitely been a challenging but very intriguing experience for me too!

It's often difficult to historicize social trends. This is because often, there isn't a clearly defined point in time where a trend becomes a trend - there may be tipping points and pivotal moments, but it is very rare to be able to immediately point to and identify such trends. Part of my research has involved constructing a timeline of the expansion of civil society organizations such as NGOs and philanthropic trusts. A new idea I've encountered, reached while developing my literature review, is that of the turn of the century being a pivotal point for politics across the world, with implications not only for how governments are structured, but also for the rationales with which we give and donate our money, time, and energy. 

The libraries have proved to be a particularly useful resource for me. Before, I'd never had to physically enter the stacks in search of literature on my research topics -- often, I could get away with making a quick Google search and clicking the links nearest to the top. The libraries - both their physical contents and the people in them - have proven to be an especially useful resource in helping me identify crucial literature that I would otherwise not have paid attention to.

The idea that film, and in general art forms, can be tools for both positive and negative social change is a fascinating one. We see and hear very often references to art being a "voice for the voiceless" and a tool for self-expression that is accessible to even the most dispossessed of people, but we don't talk nearly enough about how the same power can be reversed to maintain stereotypes and other forms of injustice. I'm excited to see how your research pans out!

I plan on developing a paper as the culmination of my research. Within this paper, I hope to capture some of the discourse surrounding the expansion of civil society across the world and some of the efforts that governments have undertaken to regulate these important pillars of society. In addition, I plan on synthesizing findings obtained from conversations with industry experts to understand some of the adaptive measures that civil society organizations, particularly non-governmental organizations and philanthropic organizations have taken in response to these challenges. 

Research into CSO adaptation matters because for better or for worse, governments are working to curb the power and influence of these organizations. They do these for range of reasons, from security concerns to concerns about the power CSOs have to uproot established social and political orders. Because this is such a growing challenge, it is important to understand how CSOs are adapting to this and what they can do to make it easier to carry out their activities in their respective areas of operation. 

Tara, this sounds like such a challenging experience. I think an interesting takeaway from the euthanasia is that sometimes the right thing to do is genuinely the best thing for the study. There are far too many case studies of tragically unethical research being conducted in the name of the advancement of science. It's reassuring to know that we don't always have to make a trade off between morality and good scientific practice. 

1. My research poses several ethical questions that I have, with the support of my supervisor, grappled with. The first is that my research focuses on a particularly vulnerable population in a region where protections for them are minimal. LGBTQ+ individuals everywhere in the world are a vulnerable population, but moreso in many African countries where regressive laws still prohibit identifying as queer, engaging with queer rights organizations, etc. Because of this, I've had to think about the best ways of protecting the identity of my respondents, while still ensuring that I obtain useable data and information about the work they do in LGBTQ+ rights organizations. 

2. At the moment, I'm working on my literature review. This is a process that demands engagement and interaction with the viewpoints of scholars within the fields of political science, human rights studies and gender and sexuality studies. The objective of this is to leverage these varying viewpoints to ground my own research. I've also taken the viewpoints of several friends into account. I talk to them about my research and they help me work through analyses and perspectives that I'm trying to classify or articulate, enriching my understanding of the literature I'm interacting with. 

Shreya, this sounds incredibly interesting and I'd love to talk more about your research. I think your work with the Justice Lab really expands what we understand about the value of conversations and interdisciplinary inquiry. There is no one way to learn about the experiences of people within the US carceral system, and interdisciplinary inquiry ensures that we cover all bases in understanding not just the political or judiciary implications of their experiences, but the psychology, sociology, history, economics, and medical implications of incarceration. 

In the humanities and social sciences, conversations are everything. Researchers in these fields are always seeking out opportunities to collaborate with and learn from each other, and from adjacent disciplines. Economists, for example, regularly borrow from the tools of anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists to understand the determinants of human behaviour in markets. Historians work with cultural studies experts and political scientists to get a fuller understanding of historical context. Interdisciplinary study is at the heart of these fields and the research they do. 

Conversations with other Laidlaw scholars have helped me understand not only the potential applications of their and my own research, but have expanded the range of methodological options available to me in my research. We don't always know what's available out there as a tool for our inquiry and so learning how biologists, epidemiologists, cognitive scientists, and others are answering the problems posed by their fields expands the range of tools available to me in my own research.