One of the key tenets of the Brackenridge Fellowship is interdisciplinarity, relating students from different fields and connecting their various ways of study to one another in order to create a supportive and diverse community of researchers. Since applying I have looked at this integrative setting as an ideal place to conduct research and have been looking forward to the various perspectives I can gain from the cross-disciplinary nature of the fellowship. I hope my time as a Brackenridge fellow will broaden my perspective on many aspects of the research community and what is important to researchers of today. As I work with my cohort I hope they will be able to help me see my own research from new angles, pushing me to create and carry out the best project I can. I am excited to grow as a person and researcher this summer through this supportive yet challenging environment.

From within my cohort I can see that the research methods and structure of linguistic studies is very different from my peer’s research that is either taking place in a lab or library archives, yet hearing about and understanding these different research methods have been helpful in expanding my personal concept of research. I also see similarities with other fellows work and my own, as several students are also using interviews and even exploring linguistic adjacent topics such as Sophia Norvilas’ work on aphasia. As I read through the blog posts the work of Sivan Lurie, Jasmine Al Rasheed, and Anna Skerret stood out to me as unique and important projects being completed with new perspectives and interesting research techniques.

As I interact with the other fellows, I can see that working with such a diverse group of researchers and topics will allow our projects to be pushed to consider new perspectives that enhance our work. Working in an interdisciplinary setting will allow for a helpful mix of ideas to inspire us to create the best version of our projects as we can. I have already been brought to think about new angles for my work based on conversations with peers. And though the integrated setting will ultimately be beneficial, it can come with difficulties as with all discussion difficult ideas and personal opinions may be disagreed with. It also may be difficult to explain aspects of respective projects to one another in terms that can be understood. Though I am convinced that the cross-disciplinarity of the Brackenridge Fellowship will be a positive research experience even if it comes with difficulties.