#ICRMC 2024

Going with the flow 

As a child I lived in the fens where fields shrank back from the roads and water pooled menacingly in deep dykes. ​But in my imagination, I lived among hills hemmed by hedgerows, streams scuffed by breezes, and bright birdsong.  

​I painted and wrote easily, unselfconsciously, prolifically.  

Pictures and words were my currency, until confident spontaneity was educated out of me.  

Scholarship required knowledge to be delivered in carefully circumscribed ways.  

I became skilled at obeying these rules and found my way into universities. ​ 

Like many late-discovered neurodivergent people​ I spent most of my life in a daze,​ 

but I came to; I'm awake now.   

My academic career began with a torrent of enthusiasm for research and teaching,​  

but all was not well within the academy, there were undercurrents of toxicity. ​ 

Abusers were shielded by patriarchy and their income-generating ability. ​ 

Institutions didn't want to risk damaging their world-class reputations. ​ 

Battling against such a heavy tide of injustice proved overwhelming.​ 

So many people had their careers derailed or destroyed; #MeToo.   

I had dreamt of doing collaborative, interdisciplinary research, ​ 

exploring lived experiences, and embracing subjectivities,​ 

writing using the first person. But pressure to publish ​ 

meant diligently following academic conventions.  ​ 

The data we gathered were analysed, sanitised,​ 

devitalised, nuances got lost in translation. ​ 

Prospective research participants​ 

who struggled to express ​ 

themselves in words ​ 

often went ​ 

unheard. 

I found sanctuary in a safe academic haven where emancipatory researchers were  

open-mindedly embracing creativity. ​I discovered how to enhance research and teaching using art, audio-visuals, prose and poetry. Immersion in multimedia innovation was revelatory. ​I was going with the flow, and it was joyful! 

By my early 40s my research activity had been consigned to the backwaters. Precarity had taken such a toll that I'd switched to a local government role for job security. In my free-time I studied for an ironic 'un-PhD' on scholarship outside the academy. ​ 

Sporadic employment in research-related roles tantalised me.   

 ​ 

It was only after the perfect storm of perimenopause had pushed me into a full-blown crisis, uncovering neurodivergence, that I emerged into a swirling whirlpool of opportunities.      

Becoming a researcher on the Bridging the Silos Autistic Menopause Study was an epiphany. ​ 

Participants' imaginative portrayals of their lived experiences were compelling, and I filled a research journal with my poems and drawings, and eclectic resources from unorthodox sources. ​ 

I had qualms about submitting an unconventional article for peer review recently, but conformity isn't cost free - sometimes we risk not going far enough. 

Creative research methods can communicate experiences which go way beyond words, so the unseen are seen, and the unheard get heard.  

Doing research again was joyfully liberating after the soul-destroying work I'd​ been undertaking. I flumed downstream propelled by pent-up energy.​ 

This watershed moment marked the beginning of a magical transcendence. ​ 

Hard-learned lessons have helped me to steer clear of hazardous toxicity. The​ sandbanks of procrastination and jagged rocks of rejection no longer hold​ any fear for me. I relish the synchronous intertwining of different strands of​ research activity, new projects bobbing up serendipitously, and the autonomy of not being bound to a single university.  

Research ebbs and flows on a tide of highs and lows.​ Journal articles get dissected, rejected and accepted.​ Boulders stand firm, dividing the stream,​ while riverbed stones tumble seawards.  

The climate and landscape have changed the river, and the river is changing me. Its watery meanderings are charting new channels, braiding lived experience and research identity.    ​ 

Creativity flows through rivers, and rivers flow through me, coursing along valleys and underground streams, crashing down waterfalls and weirs, rushing towards open-mouthed estuaries. 

Buoyed by time ticking away and the urgent need for understanding I am headed way beyond the brackish estuary, with its confluences of knowledge exchange, to the unbounded sea of enlightenment where deltas of sense-making and self-discovery reach out to infinity. ​ 

​The threads that bind me to my work, and my work to the world, are fragile yet​ 

strong. I started out somewhere I didn't fit into, but I found a space where I​ belong.   

In my old age I paint and write prolifically, unselfconsciously, easily.  

I live on a hillside, nestled among headwaters, tracing rivers from source to sea. ​ 

I research freely in liminal spaces inside and outside the academy. ​ 

I am as weathered and translucent as sea-glass. ​ 

With waves crashing in my ears, and my eyes on the luminous horizon,  

I am finally 'stepping into who I fully am'.  

Rose Matthews  

YouTube video of Going with the Flow PowerPoint presentation (made after the conference): https://youtu.be/4Lh2nuxxbGQ The musical interludes are original compositions by David de la Haye, ecological sound artist, photography and illustration by me.