This summer I am most interested to learn about the different topics that others are focusing on, which I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise. I think it would help my own research to hear about the work that everyone is doing throughout the summer, even if there isn’t always overlap with what I’m doing. I hope this will broaden my perspective on research in general and help prevent tunnel vision with my own research. If nothing else, it will be fun to learn about the niche topics that people are passionate about.

My project has the most similarities with projects that have to do with language and social sciences, and more generally, projects that have a significant qualitative component. Within my cohort, my work seems to have the most in common with Dionna’s project on language attitudes and discrimination, and Eric’s project on Russian propaganda in Turkey. However, we are all taking somewhat different approaches: Dionna will write four short stories and Eric will do quantitative analysis. I, instead, will write a research paper and do more qualitative analysis. I also think it will be interesting to see if my project has any similarities with projects based in the STEM fields, like Emily’s astronomy research. Normally I would only be able to work with people within my own discipline; it is rare to be exposed to research that is so different.

Working with people that are all doing their own projects, whether similar or different, will help me put my research in context and it will hopefully allow me to look at my research in a way that I may not have looked at it otherwise. Working with people that have different academic backgrounds could go along with the difficulty of communicating our ideas to each other. I suspect that people working on some topics would have different approaches and insight that may not translate to other topics. However, this would be a good opportunity to practice sharing ideas with people that are knowledgeable in different areas.