From the Sri Lanka Workshop

Greetings again from Sri Lanka. As planned, an AuthorAID workshop was held here last week.

The workshop attracted wonderfully diverse attendees. Most obviously, the attendees ranged considerably in age. Some had recently earned their bachelor’s degrees, some were in mid career, and many were in between.

The attendees came from various parts of Sri Lanka. Attendees from different regions networked with one another. Some hope to collaborate on research.

Finally, attendees came from many research fields. Among them were (in alphabetical order) biology, chemistry, engineering, library and information science, performing arts, political science, psychology, and sociology.

More than a few attendees came from the social sciences and humanities. However, my background is largely in the natural sciences and medicine.

Fortunately, I had as a co-facilitator a prominent Sri Lankan social scientist, Professor Kalinga Tudor Silva. Professor Silva added valuable advice on writing in the social sciences and humanities.

Professor Silva also gave a presentation on the research process. It provided excellent context for the workshop. I especially like the last slide, which lists key features of quantitative and qualitative research.

The first 3 days, the workshop focused mainly on writing and publishing journal articles. The presentations from those days now appear in the AuthorAID Resource Library.

The other 2 days, the workshop focused on writing proposals. In my next post, I’ll discuss those days, which had a different co-facilitator. Before then, I’ll add to the Resource Library the materials from those days.

Until later! —Barbara