FERSA University of Cambridge Blog
Faculty of Education Research Students' Association
About a month ago, I embarked on the second phase of my PhD journey and started my fieldwork. The pilot I carried out last summer helped me immensely in shaping up my research questions and strengthening my research instruments and my overall research design. However, it is only now, after starting my fieldwork, that the full realisation of the benefits of piloting have dawned on me.
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As I come to the end of my first year of the PhD and to the stage of handing in my first-year report, I wanted to share my thoughts on developing the methodology for my research. I should say, before commencing, that my methodology is a work in progress, and that I have a sense that it will not become ‘fixed’ for a little while to come.
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I was born and raised in Peshawar, a small city in the north of Pakistan. It is heart-breaking that Peshawar once known as “the city of flowers” has been torn apart in the name of terrorism. In 2014 a blood curdling attack on a school left the city in the state of mourning that has taken a long time to fade away. The strength of the mothers who lost their children in that attack and their desire to keep sending their children to school has inspired me to do what I do today. I am a PhD researcher at the Faculty of Education at Cambridge and my work focuses on mothers in Pakistan and the influence they have upon their daughters’ education.
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I’m writing in the arid, breezy shade outside my £10 per night hotel in northeastern Uganda. This weekend I’m taking a break from PhD life. Not really. I’m actually here to interview alumnae from the secondary school where my research is based. Being an ethnographer, everyday and every moment can be a research moment. There is taking a break, but not turning off.
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