Literature reviews: process, positioning, perspective

One of the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education's (CEEHE) core roles within the University of Newcastle (UON) is to engage in and support research related to equity, widening participation and inclusive pedagogies, and contribute towards more equitable practices, policies, language and discourses both within UON and the Australian/international higher education landscape more broadly.

In addition to the rich body of work undertaken by CEEHE academics, CEEHE also has responsibility for facilitating and supporting the equity-related research of colleagues in other schools and faculties.

This half-day workshop is intended to unpack some of the tacit understandings about how to navigate and situate work within and against other work that has been undertaken and published.

This workshop will draw on collective experiences of writing literature reviews in order to challenge assumptions (e.g. “you can just go and do the literature review”) and unpacks epistemological and disciplinary foundations of such practices, drawing on the conceptual frame of academic literacies.

This workshop will be developed to engage those colleagues who might have limited experience of applying for research funding (such as early career researchers or professional staff) or who currently hold casual employment positions in UON (such as academics on part-time, temporary contracts and/or late stage RHD students).

Lunch will be provided before the workshop and an informal networking opportunity will follow after the event. Please ensure you RSVP with any dietary requirements for catering purposes.

Time

12:45-1:30 - Lunch
1:30-4:00 - Workshop
4:15-6:15 - Networking

Content

This workshop is designed to do the following:

• Unpack the ideological and epistemological underpinnings of an academic literacies approach to reading for academic purposes;
• Make suggestions of how to ‘get into’ the literature of a particular field(s);
• Explicitly address issues of positionality and ‘reading oneself into the text’;
• Propose a set of guiding questions (but not a reified list) to help with reading complex texts;
• Present the CEEHE annotated bibliography library;
• Offer an opportunity for brainstorming new/ germinating existing ideas for equity-related research.

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