[Music]
some of my first childhood memories were
memories of war unfortunately in 1990s
in Bosnia and Herzegovina and those are
rather scary mosaics of sounds and
images coupled with a realization that
the children games with guns that I
played with my friends resembled reality
much more than ever supposed to
however some 20 years later this time as
a researcher I started a project the
time to discover what really happened
during the dis period and understand the
dynamics of events my focus was placed
on the role of religion and religious
leaders in the processes of conflict
transformation transitioned from war to
peace however I was about to undergo
another transformation myself and that
was a transformation of my ideas what a
typical scientific research journey
looks like and today I want to talk to
you about that journey the journey that
started with a great plan and ended with
great things that happened in a well
quite unplanned way but let me first
start with a simple comparison so we all
know that fashion industry is often
criticized for promoting unrealistic bad
images so even top models are routinely
subjected to intensive Photoshop
treatments and the consequences are of a
negative for people’s body perception
self-esteem even eating habits but I
wonder where something similar is
happening in the field of science of
course you might have noticed the light
bulb is photoshopped but the problem in
the latter case does not lie on the
surface of magazines but rather below
the carpet it is the reality of wrong
hypothesis fail assumptions mistakes and
difficulties that actually
ever find their way to reports
scientific magazines and publications
instead the story usually looks like
this at the beginning you have a hero or
a hero in who is always talented he’ll
always humble who detects a research
problem and three application of
scientific method follows predictable
steps over solution I practice this part
the problem with this model is that of
course it operates with the idea of
linear progress and a stable actor
whereas in reality in order to go from
point A to point B you have to descend
into hell that’s where the majority of
your PhD life happens anyway just a side
note and although the final point B
might be the same what happens in
between actually makes the game
different and if we remove the middle
part we actually apply a beautifying
filter which removes all the
imperfections and suddenly everything
seems so neat clean straightforward and
shall I say so scientific and I wonder
whether in this case there’s similar
negative effects analogous to those of
fashion magazines and the three
especially worrying symptoms in academia
first is the growing depression second
is so-called impostor syndrome that even
academics with pristine series creative
Minh sometimes report feeling like in
posters they’re not up to the task and
that ours always do it better finally
there is well-documented systematic
positive bias where those results which
are seen as publishable good and
positive are being published and others
are being neglected which of course
creates a serious replication problem
and of course I know there are many
factors here at play such as economic
insecurity workload time pressure
publication pressure but we cannot
neglect that the idea of scientific
research
that we create and share influences the
way how we do this research and finally
how we feel about ourselves as
researchers and if we could change this
and be more realistic and honest about
the way how we do research we can not
only enhance transparency but also send
a message that science is not just a
dull and gray play for superheroes in
white coats but something which is at
least fifty shades more interesting let
me give you an illustration from my own
research so I said at the beginning my
focus was the role of religion and
religious leaders in the processes of
conflict transformation in
bosnia-herzegovina so before going there
I developed the whole set of extensive
research protocols I also developed many
geographical maps hierarchical
representation which could be expanded
on many levels
there were interactive maps with
overlays and filters which enables you
to make very specific selections all
these thoughts could be again expanded I
connected them with the GPS system of my
car and I was ready to go my idea was
the following contact interview analyse
repeat I was thinking what could
possibly go wrong on the left side here
you see a page from my research diary
before leaving Belgium here on the right
side you have an expert excerpt from the
same diary just a few weeks after
arriving to Bosnia Herzegovina you might
have not noticed the difference
experienced CRO follow gist would
confirm you that there is certain
increase in an anxiety in between so
what happened was that my perfect plan
simply didn’t work and I hit the wall of
silence my long elaborated emails were
left unanswered although I tried with my
academic credential it didn’t work and I
liked to meditate the beauty of my
preparatory work but I knew that I had
to change something and change it
quickly so in short what I did is to
move from perfectly scripted plan to
creative improvisation to some degree I
felt like Nora from Henrik Ibsen’s play
Nora or the doll’s house the main
protagonist Nora the air lives in a
seemingly perfect marriage in a
beautiful household by the end she has
to abandon it in order to experience
freedom and in some sense I felt that
I’ve entered into a perfect marriage
with my research protocols and idealized
images of scientific research and that I
had to abandon them in order to explore
my academic freedom but of course the
question is once when you leave the
doll’s house where do you go in my case
there were four mental rooms that I
started to frequent it was the tavern
the bathtub the darkroom and the
confessional so let me start with the
tavern traditionally of course it’s a
place where all sorts of individuals
come to Cara it’s a blend of sands
mixing pot of noises voices a palette of
different backgrounds and destinies in
my case the tavern was a new approach
where I visited different places seek
for new sources of inspiration and new
writing styles so at the beginning of
course I abandoned my library and
educated talks and moved to streets
cafes public events that range from
conferences religious ceremonies – well
football matches between Catholic
priests and Imams I’ve noticed of course
that I was missing the basic ingredient
of trust and of course trust is built
around
ordinary events much more than through
exchange of academic credentials of
course you will say all methodological
manuals emphasize the importance of
trust I can ensure you very few of them
give you tips how to route during
religiously heterogeneous matches
of course as a result of these new
first-hand experiences stories suddenly
started pouring in and they were so rich
in detail that I knew that my previous
categories couldn’t capture the
experience so I had to change them but
when I was looking for new concepts I
then suddenly move to art poetry which
proved to be much more flexible let me
give you an example
piece of course is a very broad concept
but on one occasion I was looking for a
specific version of piece so for
instance some of my respondents
professed certain fatigue with official
peacebuilding narratives and strategies
and instead they wanted something which
they would say it’s more natural even
spontaneous and I found the perfect
concept while reading a poem of israeli
poet kuda Makai which is titled wild
peace wild peace for him and later for
me it’s a different form of peace that
grows through ordinary encounters small
events it’s much less program and much
more a surprise it’s something that
grows like a wildflower next to the
paved road of politics and I’ve noticed
with my previous concepts they wouldn’t
even notice this form of peace so I use
it as analytic concept for my work
finally I changed the way I was writing
my reports and instead of long official
documents assortative write very long
but eclectic emails to my promoters that
contained all forms of observation about
country’s history reflections about
fashion habits but also reflections
about population of abandoned dogs which
initially seemed like curiosity but many
of them were sources for my further
theoretical developments and ever at the
end much more interesting so much so
that my promoter here professor Valeri
kozo suggested me why don’t you send the
whole thesis as a long email what I
learned in tavern
than was to experience new places new
styles and new sources of inspiration
which also leads me to my second room
which is the bathtub Archimedean bathtub
of course not the most typical place to
think about mathematics but it teaches
us that ideas are often found in
unexpected places
so it happened to me quite often that
very valuable in nominating moments
happened once when the so called
official part of the interview was
finished so while we were standing on
the thresholds just before saying
goodbye sometimes I got them by paying
attention to comments mentioned in
passing and on few occasion even by
Smith’s reading my own handwriting which
was not difficult you could be
interested from illustration so why what
I learned that the bathtub was to
appreciate those moments of serendipity
to learn that ideas are not just fruits
of well-prepared experiments but also
fruits of minds which are ready to
experiment the darkroom don’t worry it
has nothing to do with SNM games
it’s a photo lab so it’s the place where
films are slowly developed and I learned
during my research that ideas are never
encountered in their pure platonic forms
instead we always enter into some form
of a darkroom where our images and ideas
first blurred are becoming clearer and
clearer at the same time however I felt
an anxiety that was not able to ask all
the relevant questions and that my
project will remain incomplete what
helped me to move forward was the
realization that every research is
essentially incomplete all the date are
basically similar to photograph taken
with large aperture there is one central
detail which is clear against the
backgrounds of many blurred elements
which can be sensed but
scene clearly however although they’re
partial and incomplete with a good focus
they can still be explanatory revealing
and perhaps even beautiful finally the
confessional that’s the place where you
go where when everything goes wrong to
make a new start and things trust me
sometimes go wrong because researchers
just like their closest biological
relatives which are humans have good
days and bad days
mistakes failures grievances but also
successes and sometimes we need a place
to restart to start a new to me of
course especially during the first phase
of my research happened quite often that
I had wrong expectations that I made
strategic me steps and that I needed a
fresh start sometimes those things were
also mundane that stopped me for
instance my car was stolen
together with my documents including my
driver’s license and I had to organize
my research from the scratch my plan
that to say so in some sense we need
some form of private confessional it can
be a diary a significant other something
that helped us to distance ourselves
from those mistakes and failures and to
move forward but there is something more
that I would suggest I think that as a
scientific community we also need some
form of public confessional where we
would openly and up unapologetically
speak about our mistakes and there are
two reasons for this one is of course
that by admitting mistakes we help
others to avoid them and to correct them
it was also niels bohr who allegedly
once said said that expert is a person
who made all possible mistakes within a
narrow field and in this way we already
help science to improve there is
something more by admitting our mistakes
we also deconstruct those idealized
narratives that put on
sorry pressure on all of us so the
tavern the bathtub the dark room and the
confessional those were four rooms in
which I learned to explore my academic
freedom and to move beyond my idealized
expectations however when I came back to
Belgium and I had to write my official
report I once again had to stick to the
good old paradigm from A to B and
although every element the rain was
correct the whole image was somehow
incomplete because it created the
impression that all that I got was the
result of initial perfect preparation
and you might be wondering where I would
have felt better without preparation and
the answer is of course not but I would
feel much more on the track and less
distressed had I heard from our
researchers about things that they
omitted from their books and reports and
in this way I felt somehow I was living
a parallel life of a good researcher who
makes good schemes and ideas and
adventurous renegade who runs away from
the old house so perhaps we are all
ready for a long overdue session on a
red couch where we would learn how to
relax this grip of perfectionism they
make us all feel to some degree like in
posters and if we would learn how to do
that to speak about our successes and
failures positive results and negative
results we could not only enhance our
scientific integrity but also show that
behind all great scientific discoveries
the really interesting exciting and
intriguing hidden lives of big ideas
thank you
you
some of my first childhood memories were
memories of war unfortunately in 1990s
in Bosnia and Herzegovina and those are
rather scary mosaics of sounds and
images coupled with a realization that
the children games with guns that I
played with my friends resembled reality
much more than ever supposed to
however some 20 years later this time as
a researcher I started a project the
time to discover what really happened
during the dis period and understand the
dynamics of events my focus was placed
on the role of religion and religious
leaders in the processes of conflict
transformation transitioned from war to
peace however I was about to undergo
another transformation myself and that
was a transformation of my ideas what a
typical scientific research journey
looks like and today I want to talk to
you about that journey the journey that
started with a great plan and ended with
great things that happened in a well
quite unplanned way but let me first
start with a simple comparison so we all
know that fashion industry is often
criticized for promoting unrealistic bad
images so even top models are routinely
subjected to intensive Photoshop
treatments and the consequences are of a
negative for people’s body perception
self-esteem even eating habits but I
wonder where something similar is
happening in the field of science of
course you might have noticed the light
bulb is photoshopped but the problem in
the latter case does not lie on the
surface of magazines but rather below
the carpet it is the reality of wrong
hypothesis fail assumptions mistakes and
difficulties that actually
ever find their way to reports
scientific magazines and publications
instead the story usually looks like
this at the beginning you have a hero or
a hero in who is always talented he’ll
always humble who detects a research
problem and three application of
scientific method follows predictable
steps over solution I practice this part
the problem with this model is that of
course it operates with the idea of
linear progress and a stable actor
whereas in reality in order to go from
point A to point B you have to descend
into hell that’s where the majority of
your PhD life happens anyway just a side
note and although the final point B
might be the same what happens in
between actually makes the game
different and if we remove the middle
part we actually apply a beautifying
filter which removes all the
imperfections and suddenly everything
seems so neat clean straightforward and
shall I say so scientific and I wonder
whether in this case there’s similar
negative effects analogous to those of
fashion magazines and the three
especially worrying symptoms in academia
first is the growing depression second
is so-called impostor syndrome that even
academics with pristine series creative
Minh sometimes report feeling like in
posters they’re not up to the task and
that ours always do it better finally
there is well-documented systematic
positive bias where those results which
are seen as publishable good and
positive are being published and others
are being neglected which of course
creates a serious replication problem
and of course I know there are many
factors here at play such as economic
insecurity workload time pressure
publication pressure but we cannot
neglect that the idea of scientific
research
that we create and share influences the
way how we do this research and finally
how we feel about ourselves as
researchers and if we could change this
and be more realistic and honest about
the way how we do research we can not
only enhance transparency but also send
a message that science is not just a
dull and gray play for superheroes in
white coats but something which is at
least fifty shades more interesting let
me give you an illustration from my own
research so I said at the beginning my
focus was the role of religion and
religious leaders in the processes of
conflict transformation in
bosnia-herzegovina so before going there
I developed the whole set of extensive
research protocols I also developed many
geographical maps hierarchical
representation which could be expanded
on many levels
there were interactive maps with
overlays and filters which enables you
to make very specific selections all
these thoughts could be again expanded I
connected them with the GPS system of my
car and I was ready to go my idea was
the following contact interview analyse
repeat I was thinking what could
possibly go wrong on the left side here
you see a page from my research diary
before leaving Belgium here on the right
side you have an expert excerpt from the
same diary just a few weeks after
arriving to Bosnia Herzegovina you might
have not noticed the difference
experienced CRO follow gist would
confirm you that there is certain
increase in an anxiety in between so
what happened was that my perfect plan
simply didn’t work and I hit the wall of
silence my long elaborated emails were
left unanswered although I tried with my
academic credential it didn’t work and I
liked to meditate the beauty of my
preparatory work but I knew that I had
to change something and change it
quickly so in short what I did is to
move from perfectly scripted plan to
creative improvisation to some degree I
felt like Nora from Henrik Ibsen’s play
Nora or the doll’s house the main
protagonist Nora the air lives in a
seemingly perfect marriage in a
beautiful household by the end she has
to abandon it in order to experience
freedom and in some sense I felt that
I’ve entered into a perfect marriage
with my research protocols and idealized
images of scientific research and that I
had to abandon them in order to explore
my academic freedom but of course the
question is once when you leave the
doll’s house where do you go in my case
there were four mental rooms that I
started to frequent it was the tavern
the bathtub the darkroom and the
confessional so let me start with the
tavern traditionally of course it’s a
place where all sorts of individuals
come to Cara it’s a blend of sands
mixing pot of noises voices a palette of
different backgrounds and destinies in
my case the tavern was a new approach
where I visited different places seek
for new sources of inspiration and new
writing styles so at the beginning of
course I abandoned my library and
educated talks and moved to streets
cafes public events that range from
conferences religious ceremonies – well
football matches between Catholic
priests and Imams I’ve noticed of course
that I was missing the basic ingredient
of trust and of course trust is built
around
ordinary events much more than through
exchange of academic credentials of
course you will say all methodological
manuals emphasize the importance of
trust I can ensure you very few of them
give you tips how to route during
religiously heterogeneous matches
of course as a result of these new
first-hand experiences stories suddenly
started pouring in and they were so rich
in detail that I knew that my previous
categories couldn’t capture the
experience so I had to change them but
when I was looking for new concepts I
then suddenly move to art poetry which
proved to be much more flexible let me
give you an example
piece of course is a very broad concept
but on one occasion I was looking for a
specific version of piece so for
instance some of my respondents
professed certain fatigue with official
peacebuilding narratives and strategies
and instead they wanted something which
they would say it’s more natural even
spontaneous and I found the perfect
concept while reading a poem of israeli
poet kuda Makai which is titled wild
peace wild peace for him and later for
me it’s a different form of peace that
grows through ordinary encounters small
events it’s much less program and much
more a surprise it’s something that
grows like a wildflower next to the
paved road of politics and I’ve noticed
with my previous concepts they wouldn’t
even notice this form of peace so I use
it as analytic concept for my work
finally I changed the way I was writing
my reports and instead of long official
documents assortative write very long
but eclectic emails to my promoters that
contained all forms of observation about
country’s history reflections about
fashion habits but also reflections
about population of abandoned dogs which
initially seemed like curiosity but many
of them were sources for my further
theoretical developments and ever at the
end much more interesting so much so
that my promoter here professor Valeri
kozo suggested me why don’t you send the
whole thesis as a long email what I
learned in tavern
than was to experience new places new
styles and new sources of inspiration
which also leads me to my second room
which is the bathtub Archimedean bathtub
of course not the most typical place to
think about mathematics but it teaches
us that ideas are often found in
unexpected places
so it happened to me quite often that
very valuable in nominating moments
happened once when the so called
official part of the interview was
finished so while we were standing on
the thresholds just before saying
goodbye sometimes I got them by paying
attention to comments mentioned in
passing and on few occasion even by
Smith’s reading my own handwriting which
was not difficult you could be
interested from illustration so why what
I learned that the bathtub was to
appreciate those moments of serendipity
to learn that ideas are not just fruits
of well-prepared experiments but also
fruits of minds which are ready to
experiment the darkroom don’t worry it
has nothing to do with SNM games
it’s a photo lab so it’s the place where
films are slowly developed and I learned
during my research that ideas are never
encountered in their pure platonic forms
instead we always enter into some form
of a darkroom where our images and ideas
first blurred are becoming clearer and
clearer at the same time however I felt
an anxiety that was not able to ask all
the relevant questions and that my
project will remain incomplete what
helped me to move forward was the
realization that every research is
essentially incomplete all the date are
basically similar to photograph taken
with large aperture there is one central
detail which is clear against the
backgrounds of many blurred elements
which can be sensed but
scene clearly however although they’re
partial and incomplete with a good focus
they can still be explanatory revealing
and perhaps even beautiful finally the
confessional that’s the place where you
go where when everything goes wrong to
make a new start and things trust me
sometimes go wrong because researchers
just like their closest biological
relatives which are humans have good
days and bad days
mistakes failures grievances but also
successes and sometimes we need a place
to restart to start a new to me of
course especially during the first phase
of my research happened quite often that
I had wrong expectations that I made
strategic me steps and that I needed a
fresh start sometimes those things were
also mundane that stopped me for
instance my car was stolen
together with my documents including my
driver’s license and I had to organize
my research from the scratch my plan
that to say so in some sense we need
some form of private confessional it can
be a diary a significant other something
that helped us to distance ourselves
from those mistakes and failures and to
move forward but there is something more
that I would suggest I think that as a
scientific community we also need some
form of public confessional where we
would openly and up unapologetically
speak about our mistakes and there are
two reasons for this one is of course
that by admitting mistakes we help
others to avoid them and to correct them
it was also niels bohr who allegedly
once said said that expert is a person
who made all possible mistakes within a
narrow field and in this way we already
help science to improve there is
something more by admitting our mistakes
we also deconstruct those idealized
narratives that put on
sorry pressure on all of us so the
tavern the bathtub the dark room and the
confessional those were four rooms in
which I learned to explore my academic
freedom and to move beyond my idealized
expectations however when I came back to
Belgium and I had to write my official
report I once again had to stick to the
good old paradigm from A to B and
although every element the rain was
correct the whole image was somehow
incomplete because it created the
impression that all that I got was the
result of initial perfect preparation
and you might be wondering where I would
have felt better without preparation and
the answer is of course not but I would
feel much more on the track and less
distressed had I heard from our
researchers about things that they
omitted from their books and reports and
in this way I felt somehow I was living
a parallel life of a good researcher who
makes good schemes and ideas and
adventurous renegade who runs away from
the old house so perhaps we are all
ready for a long overdue session on a
red couch where we would learn how to
relax this grip of perfectionism they
make us all feel to some degree like in
posters and if we would learn how to do
that to speak about our successes and
failures positive results and negative
results we could not only enhance our
scientific integrity but also show that
behind all great scientific discoveries
the really interesting exciting and
intriguing hidden lives of big ideas
thank you
you
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