Staff Invisible Work Draft 3.mp3
Transcript
00:00:05 Beth
Hello and welcome to Let's Talk EDI, a podcast created by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures at the University of Leeds.
This conversation, produced and edited by Susan Preston, is about invisible work and I'm joined by three faculty colleagues who will be sharing their experiences and perspectives.
I'm Professor Beth Johnson. I'm Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for the Faculty and I'll be hosting today's discussion.
The term invisible work can be used to describe the many forms of labour that contribute to academic life and to our university communities, but which can be informal, unrecorded or insufficiently recognised.
For colleagues, this might include supporting others through providing emotional support and pastoral care, undertaking some EDI and representative work, supporting students and colleagues beyond formal responsibilities and the often unseen work involved in creating and sustaining inclusive HE communities. Much of this work can be enormously meaningful and rewarding. At the same time, it can make significant demands on people's time and emotional energy. During today's conversation, we'll explore what invisible work means to our colleagues and the different forms it can take.
We'll consider whether its burdens fall more heavily on particular people or groups and how it intersects with identity, formal roles and within HE life. But we also want to think about how invisible work might be made more visible. So we'll hear about some of the strategies our colleagues have used to recognise and articulate this work. and reflect on what might help ensure that contributions which can easily go unseen are more visible and better understood. Our participants have had an opportunity to consider some questions in advance and we'll use these to guide the conversation. But we also want this to be a genuine discussion and to make space for the experiences and issues that emerge as we talk. So before we begin, I'd like to invite each of our colleagues to introduce themselves briefly.
00:02:13 Mary
My name is Mary Glasper. I am one of two lead technicians in the School of Design and I'm responsible for all of the technical spaces related to fashion, textiles and colour.
00:02:23 Abigail
Hi, I'm Abigail Harrison Moore. I'm a professor of Art History and Museum Studies in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Culture Studies at the University of Leeds and I think I've probably been here the longest of around the table. I've been here 31 years so you can imagine how old I am from that.
00:02:38 John
Hello, I'm John Hammersley. I'm A lecturer in Design Studies in the School of Design and I'm an artist teaching on the Art and Design programme, but I also teach onto the school-wide theory modules.
00:02:50 Beth
That's great. Thank you all so much for being here. I wanted to start with a question about invisible work. So when you hear the phrase invisible work in universities, what does that mean to you? How do you understand that personally?
00:03:06 Mary
For me personally, when I hear the term invisible work, I keep getting pulled back to my background in like clothing, comfort and ergonomics, where the term comfort is defined as the absence of discomfort. And I feel like invisible work really lends itself well to that definition, where things run smoothly when there's a bunch of work happening behind the scenes that we don't see, and you don't notice it. So you think, no, there's no problem, everything's fine. But as soon as that's not happening and you notice that things are kind of going off the rails, I feel like that's when you really notice that invisible work isn't happening. And what that invisible work looks like really depends on the role that you're in.
00:03:48 John
I'm reminded of a transition from work I did in the community arts charity sector when I encountered a similar term, dark matter, which is that sort of hidden creative work that sustains what's made visible, very similar to what Mary was saying. And then coming back into the education space, there's that similar amount of support, the technicians, the process work that leads to the output of the degree show. But it's the huge mass of that work and process that goes to delivering sometimes final visual output.
00:04:26 Abigail
And I think it speaks to what we're probably going to talk quite a lot about today, about the emotional, because I think often, to pick on Mary's point, when invisible work becomes visible, it's sometimes because it's an emotional response to it. It's either because it's joyous, and I think about degree shows, you know, one of the absolute joys of working in the School of Fine Art is every year the degree show. that celebration. But it's also those moments where you could, cry because you just think I put so much into this or this group have put in so much to this and I'm not sure anybody sees what's gone behind it.
00:05:02 Beth
Thank you all and there were some really good examples there of maybe when we feel invisible work as well as sort of how we understand that. It leads really nicely on to the next question that I wanted to ask which was, Could you share what kinds of work tend to be valued and rewarded in universities and maybe what kinds of work remain overlooked in your experiences?
00:05:27 Mary
In my experience, I mean, I participate in teaching support but I'm predominantly kind of more research focused. So from that perspective, research outputs, very highly valued. How many publications have you written this year? What's the impact factor of the journal that publication is in? How many conferences have you gone to? All these things that you can have kind of like numerical metrics against them, easy to measure. So among other things, obviously, high profile awards or really high, teaching awards or NSS results. But there's kind of a theme there in terms of things that are measurable and kind of tangible. I think a lot of, to John's point from earlier, I think a lot of work that does get overlooked tends to be operational. And I'm not saying that that's specific to technicians and professional services staff. There's a ton of admin and operational work that everybody at the university does. What that looks like, I think, is different depending on what your role is. So obviously from a technician perspective, an example of something that many of us do that I think goes overlooked, for example, say we're supporting PhD students or researchers or MSC students who are doing their summer projects. They meet regularly with their supervisor. They review their progress. Supervisor makes suggestions for next steps. They're like, yeah, okay, great. I totally know what's happening. And then they leave that meeting and they come to my office and they're like, oh my God, Mary. They told me to do this, but I don't know what it is. And so there's a bit of an initial like, right, okay, take a deep breath. Everything's fine. You got this. It's not as complicated as it sounds. So there's kind of that emotional kind of, I become a bit of a hype woman. And then there's also like, okay, let's break this down. This is what they've asked you to do. What does success look like? What are we going for? And then just kind of talking them through that process. Because then my job is also to facilitate them actually doing that work, whether it's in the spaces that I oversee or that of my colleagues. Okay, talk to this person if you want to do that. Talk to that person. What the supervisor doesn't see is the fact that conversation happens with almost all of their students. They just see that the student comes back to their next meeting and they'll, oh yeah, look at all the stuff, these nice graphs, you know, or I gave them my template spreadsheet that they could use so they didn't have to do it themselves.
You know, all of those things that just go into kind of smoothing out the process so that they can focus on the work that they're trying to do and not have to worry so much about the logistics of it and all of that kind of background stuff.
00:07:57 Abigail
I'd like to say over the long period I've been here, I've seen a massive shift in what is visible and what is invisible. I think I've seen a really significant shift. I think in research terms it's been around the impact agenda, which I hate that word, but you know it's a really important agenda. So research that actually makes a difference is becoming more valued, although there's been at times an instrumentalisation of that, which kind of It is about, as you say, Mary, it's about trying to evidence and delineate those outputs. But it's very, very hard to, you know, one of the things as participatory researchers we think a lot about is how do you actually make visible all of the effort, all of the work that goes into doing something that makes a difference beyond the university. But I think because it's cared for, you know, I came in the humanities day where if you wrote a book, then you were great. If you didn't write a book, then you weren't great. And that wasn't something I can write books, I've written books. but it's not something that fills me with joy. Joy for me is about teaching in a classroom where you see the difference that you make or working with a community group and you see the difference that makes or working with your colleagues and you see the difference that makes but that's much more difficult to measure. So I do think every time I feel like we're taking really good steps forward, particularly around the EDI agenda, I then quite often will hit a wall or work with a colleague who I'm mentoring and see the walls that they are hitting and think, oh no, we haven't. That invisible work is still so invisible and we haven't. And I've done a lot of work at a leadership level through the promotions route to try and find better ways of making that invisible more visible so that we can reward colleagues who are making a massive difference, whatever they're doing. But it's still really, really difficult. And I think we always get stuck on the how do we evidence it. So I think, Mary, you're absolutely right.
00:09:57 John
Perhaps it's the sort of subject area lens that I look at this through, thinking about the dominant value of the universities being market values and there's that economic nuance to invisible labour. Things that are economic tend to be valued first or more than other things that can't be measured or counted as easily I think Mary was pointing out. And so what's visible from a sort of a design critical lens is what draws attention to the university's brand, how it can appear in the public space, how it can grab attention, either research attention or civic public attention and I think the work that's valued increasingly is stuff that can be easily put to that work of drawing attention and supporting the university brand value.
00:10:51 Beth
I think in terms of that brand value it brings us back really nicely to what's highly visible. and what we can measure, what we can see, how people will engage with that both internally and externally, but there's something else behind that which I think's already come up as well and that goes back I think to those relational and emotional engagements that we have when we're doing work that we may think actually is a good fit within those spaces and then perhaps it might not be. So I suppose I want to move us on a little bit to thinking more about the relational and the emotional aspects of invisible work and I wanted to ask if you're willing to share how that might have sort of shown up in your experience of university life.
00:11:40 John
Going back to the idea of degree shows and students having to go through that journey of becoming comfortable publishing themselves, making themselves visible through exhibition. But even in the learning space, I mean, there's this process of going out into the world and speaking out, being seen speaking in groups of other students. And I think visible work is also collective work. I think there's this learning, there's this building the resources for making oneself public that goes on.
00:12:18 Abigail
That really picks up because I think one of the pieces of work that I felt has too often been invisible, even though it has a very visible outcome, is the work that we do around educational engagement. So the work that we do beyond the university and I'm very lucky to have spent many, many years because I I'm very aware of myself in this space as a professor but I've always kind of felt slightly out of there in the fact that I came from a very different background to a lot of the people I saw around me when I came here. And so right from the beginning it was about going out into schools and helping young people to be themselves but also to find a voice. That work because because it falls between this sort of two pillar that we see particularly in the Russell Group universities that we have student education and I've seen again a massive increase of valuing the work that we do around student education because of things both externally and internally and because of measures, office for students measures, access and participation plan measures, NSS, National Student Survey, all of these things brilliantly and rightly made a step up because when I first came here, student education was kind of the bit that I'm going to gender it, the women did in quite a lot of the time at that time. I had many, many brilliant male colleagues who did that work, but we always noticed when we went to student education committees that there was a gender imbalance within that space. And then, but that became more visible and that is very much a pillar of our work. And then we got the research pillar. And there's a load of work that falls between those two that is about supporting what we do as researchers and what we do in the student learning and education space.
00:14:01 Mary
Picking up on your point with student support from a technician's perspective, I think technicians in AHC, probably more than pretty much any other faculty in the university from what I can tell, were heavily involved in supporting students in technical spaces. And because we work so closely with them for long periods of time, especially if they're working on a larger project in our spaces, and because we're not involved in their assessment, I think students often feel a bit more comfortable coming to us if they're struggling or in crisis. Thankfully, our Alex Vann, our faculty technical services manager, recently kind of arranged for bespoke training for us called Rapid that where we were invited all to participate in this and learn a bit more about.
So I'm posting to appropriate resources and being able to manage that and the emotional fallout that happens as a relative supporting somebody who's in crisis and knowing where to point them in a direction where they don't just then end up going in this crazy circle of just hot potato because it's like actually Bob isn't the person to talk to, you need to talk to this other person in this other office. We want to avoid that and make sure that students can get the help that they need right away. And then talking about what do we personally take on and how do we protect our own well-being and health in supporting students who are really struggling.
So I think that's been a really positive development over the last year, kind of recognising that technicians are often kind of the front line, just by the very nature of the work we do and the nature of the relationship that we have with students.
00:15:39 Abigail
It's getting better.
00:15:40 Mary
Yeah.
00:15:40 Abigail
But I think it's one of those challenges that when I work outside of the university within community and outreach services, there's a lot, I would say, much better embedded Safeguarding and support for colleagues who are doing that work, because things like disclosure, we will all have experienced a student coming to us and saying something, I think I reflected on this quite a lot when my daughter got to university age and suddenly I was like, oh crikey, oh yes, that's what we've been juggling all these years.
And that's why actually you walk away from some of those academic personal tutoring meetings or working in the technical space or degree show, often they'll talk to you when they're making work and they feel, and you think, how do I, what do I do with that? How do I, and then you worry, have I got it right? And I think the more we can put in absolutely those sorts of structures that help colleagues signpost and understand that it's, invisible often involves taking on a burden yourself and it's, you've got to find a way of dealing with that because otherwise that gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then you explode and that's no good for anybody.
00:16:53 Mary
Yeah, taking on that kind of emotional weight. of numerous students over the years and just not really having kind of a healthy outlet for that yourself as well.
00:17:02 Abigail
And staff.
00:17:03 Mary
And feeling like you're just shouldering all that and there's not really, there's nowhere for you to go. it's just, yeah, it's really good to have that recognition and support.
00:17:12 Abigail
Yeah. Students always know who they will identify. I mean, I think often when we work in studio spaces, concert spaces, theatre spaces, broadcast spaces, and as you say, our faculty is unusual in those very collaborative spaces. There are more, there are, in a classroom, there's less of a space to say how you feel or to ask a question. So, or they might grab you on the corridor. But actually, if you're in a theatre, a studio, a space like this podcast studio, students will often and colleagues will disclose things. And it's like, how do you deal with that?
00:17:52 John
Isn't there an expectation that the emotion is done privately, that you take that away and you recuperate? But I think Mary's maybe hinting that actually you go and have a chat with another colleague and share. share that work. And so that emotional work just kind of spreads and we're all doing it all the time, but a lot of us probably are doing it in private as well. And that's the difficult invisible recuperation. I guess it's more difficult for people that maybe haven't got the resources, their own emotional resources to process and do the work of recovering from emotional encounters with other people. And I guess that's maybe why, I think universities recognise learning is a psychologically challenging and threatening at times experience when you're risking being told, knowing that that's not right or you need to rethink who you are or what you feel about the world. That's quite a lot of work to be doing that week in, week out for a few years consistently.
00:19:02 Beth
I entirely agree. I think in terms of that emotional work, do you think there are particular groups, I know we've touched on perhaps roles and spaces, but do you think there are particular groups who seem to maybe perhaps bear more invisible work than others?
00:19:24 John
I think people that are already coming with the burden of, emotional work or damage or lower resources. I mean everybody's juggling different things, different life situations.
Reflecting on my own experience recently of poor health, I think people who have health problems are also doing a lot of invisible work of recuperation and there are lots of other dimensions to ability, disability, Hidden disabilities, that's right, yeah.
00:20:01 Abigail
I don't ever like to break it down of this particular, because I think we create these groups within universities to get the work done, so there are the groups of people who support teaching, there are the groups of people who support admissions, there's groups of people who support research, there are academics who move into, but I actually think within all of that systemized situation, there are people who elect maybe actively or in that, consciously or unconsciously to do the work that is deemed is found to be more invisible because it's who you are and it's what you, one of the reasons I'm in this educational world, I fell into it by mistake, one of the reasons I'm still here is because I absolutely love it. I want, you know, I like working with people, I like communicating, I like learning about people, you know, in whatever environment I've ever worked with in schools, prisons, universities, it's that environment of talking to people. So I will actively elect to do work that does bring with it a level of invisibility. And then I think there are other people who are much better at either not electing to do that or protecting themselves within that. And I think often when invisible work becomes visible, it's when we get frustrated because we can see that others are much more capable for whatever reason of protecting themselves and holding it. And then we're sort of running around doing it and going, but isn't everybody doing, where's my outlet? And I think that's another thing about being working outside the university. The first time someone said to me, right now we're going to have a meeting every week because I need to be, I need to ask you your safeguarding questions. I need to know, are you okay? And I think Yes, on corridors we might say to colleagues, are you okay? But actually to actively build in that are you okay time to the working week, that's something that I'm really taking out of. That's what actually participatory research, participatory learning really demands.
And we're not, we need to do more of that. We need to do more of recognising that those people who run towards it, fabulous. But we also have to create support structures for them.
00:22:19 Mary
I think, someone will say, I mean, I'm guilty of this as well. I'll send an e-mail to our math team and be like, hey, can you help me do a thing? And then they do it and they're like, yep, great, all done, Mary.
But what I don't see is all of the, okay, well, I have to talk to so-and-so in that area because they usually reply to my e-mail quickly and then I have to do this, but then I have to like fill out this form that specific way so that they get that and then, you know, this guy doesn't ignore it because I know if I worded that way, that guy's going to ignore it. There's so much of that happens.
00:22:46 Abigail
I think trust is really important in this subject area because I think when we talk about invisible, invisible, I think most of the time we do work and we trust because we're doing the best we can. And I think where we really need to do more of this work, and thank you for this podcast series, is recognising that the reason we have this binary between visible and invisible is often on this line around questions of trust
What are we doing and are we trusting that what we are doing will be recognised in a way that makes difference? And sometimes that is just someone saying thank you. And other times it's getting your loving promotion that you've deserved for a long time and feeling that you've walked into space where people are prepared to recognise through the promotions process what you're doing. And there's a sort of a long line of that. I'm all for the everyday thank yous. I think that's so important in terms of visible work.
00:23:49 Beth
Back in January we held a workshop and it was called Together We Rise and it was a faculty workshop held with women at Leeds but actually some of the really interesting, brilliant people who shared their thoughts, many of them said a very similar thing.
There's all sorts of different ways in which recognition works and sometimes that needs to be or can be every day, thank you, I see you, and other times it takes very different forms. But that point of recognition is so important. And I think in terms of trust, incredibly important in relation to invisible work, trusting that, as you said, your contributions will be acknowledged, that they will be recognised. I want to turn more toward any strategies or any experiences that you'd be happy to share in terms of how what maybe feels like invisible work or work that's not recognised so much has been recognised?
00:24:56 John
Thinking about what Mary was saying when she was talking about space, or I was picking up on the idea that sometimes maybe technicians are hidden in the background and some of the teaching spaces are more at the front and there's a kind of a theatre to university life. And again in our school there's the gallery space which is in some way the most forward-facing public space. We have staff and student exhibitions. I think there's talk also of foregrounding and bringing technicians as other creative practitioners into that space as well. And so I think one of the techniques or strategies is just thinking about who is at the background and bringing them forward rather like that sort of thank you at the end of a theatrical performance when people get brought through by the lead actors. I think there's a certain amount of theatre to performing the kind of appreciation and visibility. And it does actually require people who are at the front to bring others forward.
00:26:08 Mary
I have an excellent example of that. First off, a fun anecdote when it comes to saying thank you. One of my colleagues not too long ago, I was going through like a stressful time and I was just feeling so frustrated with things and And I come to my desk and I notice there's a little box of Maltesers on my desk with a little thank you note saying like, Mary, I really appreciate everything that you do. Thanks. Thank you. Just tearing up just thinking about it. Like small gestures like that just go such a long way. But building on John's point about those who are in front kind of like also bringing people out and letting them stand in the limelight a little bit. One of the professors I work most closely with, shout out to Stephen Russell. He has been really great at trying to kind of lift me up as a colleague. So there was a project we worked on a few years ago where I did, as a technician, I was assigned to that project. I did the bulk of the laboratory work and I helped write the article. And we published 2 papers where I was first author on those papers. And one of those papers has already been cited like 12 times. and in pretty high impact journals. And I mean, I think to think of a technician being first author on 2 high impact papers, I think there's a lot of people listening to this to be like, sorry, what? This really does not happen often. You often hear about these struggles of technicians even being acknowledged in the acknowledgement section.So I feel like those kinds of things and having academic colleagues recognize the contributions we can make, it's very much viewing it as we're all on the same team.We're all contributing to research and teaching excellence and how we contribute to that looks a bit different, but that doesn't mean that we have to be obsessed with like only people who are in this position do this thing. If you're working with people who have a natural affinity for something and you can see that they can contribute in that way, then like encourage that.
00:28:03 Abigail
I think absolutely.
00:28:04 Abigail
And I think one of the things around, particularly in our faculty, because so much of the work that we're now doing from a research point of view is broadly defined as participatory and it's absolutely outside of the institution.
And we keep, I mean, I keep encountering barriers where I'm saying, no, we have written this or we have created this. And so, but an editor will say, oh, no, you're, you know, we can only have academic.authors on that and I'm saying we won't publish with you and sometimes holding the line on that and actually saying this is the space where we're going to go and I mean using the podcast as a participatory output has allowed the voices because no one can take away from everybody's individual voice within that space and then bring it back into the university. I was lucky, I'm going to say lucky, I feel lucky that I was the first through on the grade 10 professorship route that's called academic leadership and it was a really It was a difficult process and it was a process that had come out of a lot of frustration and a lot of work that we've been doing at the university about what happens to those people that fall between the gaps that are really contributing at a very senior level but they don't. They can't be broadly defined just as research. And then we'd also done a teaching a scholarship route that the time just felt impossible. It was almost like that sense of, oh, we need to make it really hard. And there was no in between. And working with very senior colleagues from the human resources to say, how do we evidence this? And actually create a space where, and it comes back to what you were saying about communication, how do we create a space where someone can be supported?
And that's why we do lots of mentoring work people are going through these promotions exercises to say, what is your evidence? And often I'll sit with someone and they'll say, I've got nothing, I've got nothing on this. And I go, you did that. And they go, that doesn't count. Yes, it does count. And it's about the way of learning how to communicate what matters to you and your research or your teaching practice, your education engagement practice, your professional practice, how we communicate and evidence the difference that you make.
And then how we also train the promotions panels to recognise that difference looks different But we have to continue to support everybody to find ways to communicate, to make visible their work. So in participatory research we're using podcasting, we're using video, we're using photography, we're using zines, we're using collaborative writing. Within the university and within the very specific structures of motions we have to support all colleagues to think about how do you make visible, often through words,
And more and more we're trying to think about the ways, because we're dealing with lots of different neurodiversity, disability, how do we find the best ways to help people communicate actually the difference that they make? It is about also acknowledging what is the strategy of the organisation we work within and speaking to that and making visible the difference that we make in relationship to the strategy of the organisation that we're working within.
00:31:08 Beth
I think in terms of some of the discussions we've had today, thinking about the roles of mentoring, for example, thinking about the role of thanking people, thinking about the role of bringing people forward. I love the sort of front theatre, back theatre analogy that you brought in as well, John. There's so many helpful strategies you've shared today and I'm incredibly grateful for that. I think in the line sometimes as we've talked about is also important and ensuring that we take some time to care for ourselves and our communities together. Is there anything anyone would like to add?
00:31:51 Mary
I guess just one thing I wanted to mention before we close out was I think we're at a time as a university where there's a lot of change happening. Mergers, reorganisations, realignments. I just want to appeal to the decision makers out there who might be listening to us. If you're at a point where you're having to make a decision about a process or making something easier or not doing this anymore or starting something new, please, pretty please, consult the people who are on the ground doing the thing that you're making a decision about and just understand, try to understand the impact and the invisible work that's involved.
00:32:31 Abigail
I think that's absolutely but I also think we also need to remind ourselves if we feel safe and we've talked about safety and trust to step forward with that as well. I think one of the things I was going to think about is I think sometimes I've sometimes been accused of being, don't want to gender it but it has to be gendered, about being arrogant because I try very hard to be confident in the space where I'm offering support or advice. Behind it I'm thinking everybody thinks I'm an absolute idiot.
You know, I spend a lot of time talking to students about the fact I miss, I look, I hope I look like a swan dressed in black, a swan, but underneath I'm a duck going, everyone hates me, I don't belong here, I'm not, it's not right here. And we've talked to inauguals about never feeling like you quite belong.
And I think the problem with that is it means that you don't think that you have a voice and we as an institution need to continue to be better helping everybody feel safe.
00:33:29 John
Slightly different take. I'm thinking about those moments when maybe I don't feel I want to be visible, don't feel safe to be visible, and conscious that it feels like a constant demand. Not just the workload, but the processes of a university are about making things apparent to other people, to managers, making things clear, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with John Hall, who was a blind educator, who challenged me as an art student about my visual bias. And so one of the things that I've been thinking about, the importance of invisible, invisible work is paradoxically what those phrases might, what the blind spot of those phrases might also be. And I think there are a few of those themes about trust. The few things that we can't capturing visual metaphors that I think are important for me in this conversation.
00:34:31 Beth
Thanks John. Am I right in interpreting that you're also saying the blind spots in thinking about making that invisible work visible is that not everybody might want that work to be visible and they might not want themselves to be visible.
So respecting that while there's perhaps a principle that people shouldn't do work that's not recognised, individuals visibility is also something quite personal.
00:34:59 John
Absolutely. And there are sort of critiques of the language of visibility, touching on something you were saying earlier about maybe displacing the language of oppression or exploitation. So these words go alongside other words that maybe not visual, but the visual sometimes is metaphorical and comfortable and we need to keep on unpacking the visual and the invisible.
00:35:28 Beth
Thank you all so much. It has been an absolute honour to share this space, to have time to think about and discuss people's experiences and I'm incredibly grateful for you all sharing your time and your practices and some fabulous stories of your HE lives and what invisible work means within those. Thank you all so much.
Transcript
00:00:05 Beth
Hello and welcome to Let's Talk EDI, a podcast created by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures at the University of Leeds.
This conversation, produced and edited by Susan Preston, is about invisible work and I'm joined by three faculty colleagues who will be sharing their experiences and perspectives.
I'm Professor Beth Johnson. I'm Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for the Faculty and I'll be hosting today's discussion.
The term invisible work can be used to describe the many forms of labour that contribute to academic life and to our university communities, but which can be informal, unrecorded or insufficiently recognised.
For colleagues, this might include supporting others through providing emotional support and pastoral care, undertaking some EDI and representative work, supporting students and colleagues beyond formal responsibilities and the often unseen work involved in creating and sustaining inclusive HE communities. Much of this work can be enormously meaningful and rewarding. At the same time, it can make significant demands on people's time and emotional energy. During today's conversation, we'll explore what invisible work means to our colleagues and the different forms it can take.
We'll consider whether its burdens fall more heavily on particular people or groups and how it intersects with identity, formal roles and within HE life. But we also want to think about how invisible work might be made more visible. So we'll hear about some of the strategies our colleagues have used to recognise and articulate this work. and reflect on what might help ensure that contributions which can easily go unseen are more visible and better understood. Our participants have had an opportunity to consider some questions in advance and we'll use these to guide the conversation. But we also want this to be a genuine discussion and to make space for the experiences and issues that emerge as we talk. So before we begin, I'd like to invite each of our colleagues to introduce themselves briefly.
00:02:13 Mary
My name is Mary Glasper. I am one of two lead technicians in the School of Design and I'm responsible for all of the technical spaces related to fashion, textiles and colour.
00:02:23 Abigail
Hi, I'm Abigail Harrison Moore. I'm a professor of Art History and Museum Studies in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Culture Studies at the University of Leeds and I think I've probably been here the longest of around the table. I've been here 31 years so you can imagine how old I am from that.
00:02:38 John
Hello, I'm John Hammersley. I'm A lecturer in Design Studies in the School of Design and I'm an artist teaching on the Art and Design programme, but I also teach onto the school-wide theory modules.
00:02:50 Beth
That's great. Thank you all so much for being here. I wanted to start with a question about invisible work. So when you hear the phrase invisible work in universities, what does that mean to you? How do you understand that personally?
00:03:06 Mary
For me personally, when I hear the term invisible work, I keep getting pulled back to my background in like clothing, comfort and ergonomics, where the term comfort is defined as the absence of discomfort. And I feel like invisible work really lends itself well to that definition, where things run smoothly when there's a bunch of work happening behind the scenes that we don't see, and you don't notice it. So you think, no, there's no problem, everything's fine. But as soon as that's not happening and you notice that things are kind of going off the rails, I feel like that's when you really notice that invisible work isn't happening. And what that invisible work looks like really depends on the role that you're in.
00:03:48 John
I'm reminded of a transition from work I did in the community arts charity sector when I encountered a similar term, dark matter, which is that sort of hidden creative work that sustains what's made visible, very similar to what Mary was saying. And then coming back into the education space, there's that similar amount of support, the technicians, the process work that leads to the output of the degree show. But it's the huge mass of that work and process that goes to delivering sometimes final visual output.
00:04:26 Abigail
And I think it speaks to what we're probably going to talk quite a lot about today, about the emotional, because I think often, to pick on Mary's point, when invisible work becomes visible, it's sometimes because it's an emotional response to it. It's either because it's joyous, and I think about degree shows, you know, one of the absolute joys of working in the School of Fine Art is every year the degree show. that celebration. But it's also those moments where you could, cry because you just think I put so much into this or this group have put in so much to this and I'm not sure anybody sees what's gone behind it.
00:05:02 Beth
Thank you all and there were some really good examples there of maybe when we feel invisible work as well as sort of how we understand that. It leads really nicely on to the next question that I wanted to ask which was, Could you share what kinds of work tend to be valued and rewarded in universities and maybe what kinds of work remain overlooked in your experiences?
00:05:27 Mary
In my experience, I mean, I participate in teaching support but I'm predominantly kind of more research focused. So from that perspective, research outputs, very highly valued. How many publications have you written this year? What's the impact factor of the journal that publication is in? How many conferences have you gone to? All these things that you can have kind of like numerical metrics against them, easy to measure. So among other things, obviously, high profile awards or really high, teaching awards or NSS results. But there's kind of a theme there in terms of things that are measurable and kind of tangible. I think a lot of, to John's point from earlier, I think a lot of work that does get overlooked tends to be operational. And I'm not saying that that's specific to technicians and professional services staff. There's a ton of admin and operational work that everybody at the university does. What that looks like, I think, is different depending on what your role is. So obviously from a technician perspective, an example of something that many of us do that I think goes overlooked, for example, say we're supporting PhD students or researchers or MSC students who are doing their summer projects. They meet regularly with their supervisor. They review their progress. Supervisor makes suggestions for next steps. They're like, yeah, okay, great. I totally know what's happening. And then they leave that meeting and they come to my office and they're like, oh my God, Mary. They told me to do this, but I don't know what it is. And so there's a bit of an initial like, right, okay, take a deep breath. Everything's fine. You got this. It's not as complicated as it sounds. So there's kind of that emotional kind of, I become a bit of a hype woman. And then there's also like, okay, let's break this down. This is what they've asked you to do. What does success look like? What are we going for? And then just kind of talking them through that process. Because then my job is also to facilitate them actually doing that work, whether it's in the spaces that I oversee or that of my colleagues. Okay, talk to this person if you want to do that. Talk to that person. What the supervisor doesn't see is the fact that conversation happens with almost all of their students. They just see that the student comes back to their next meeting and they'll, oh yeah, look at all the stuff, these nice graphs, you know, or I gave them my template spreadsheet that they could use so they didn't have to do it themselves.
You know, all of those things that just go into kind of smoothing out the process so that they can focus on the work that they're trying to do and not have to worry so much about the logistics of it and all of that kind of background stuff.
00:07:57 Abigail
I'd like to say over the long period I've been here, I've seen a massive shift in what is visible and what is invisible. I think I've seen a really significant shift. I think in research terms it's been around the impact agenda, which I hate that word, but you know it's a really important agenda. So research that actually makes a difference is becoming more valued, although there's been at times an instrumentalisation of that, which kind of It is about, as you say, Mary, it's about trying to evidence and delineate those outputs. But it's very, very hard to, you know, one of the things as participatory researchers we think a lot about is how do you actually make visible all of the effort, all of the work that goes into doing something that makes a difference beyond the university. But I think because it's cared for, you know, I came in the humanities day where if you wrote a book, then you were great. If you didn't write a book, then you weren't great. And that wasn't something I can write books, I've written books. but it's not something that fills me with joy. Joy for me is about teaching in a classroom where you see the difference that you make or working with a community group and you see the difference that makes or working with your colleagues and you see the difference that makes but that's much more difficult to measure. So I do think every time I feel like we're taking really good steps forward, particularly around the EDI agenda, I then quite often will hit a wall or work with a colleague who I'm mentoring and see the walls that they are hitting and think, oh no, we haven't. That invisible work is still so invisible and we haven't. And I've done a lot of work at a leadership level through the promotions route to try and find better ways of making that invisible more visible so that we can reward colleagues who are making a massive difference, whatever they're doing. But it's still really, really difficult. And I think we always get stuck on the how do we evidence it. So I think, Mary, you're absolutely right.
00:09:57 John
Perhaps it's the sort of subject area lens that I look at this through, thinking about the dominant value of the universities being market values and there's that economic nuance to invisible labour. Things that are economic tend to be valued first or more than other things that can't be measured or counted as easily I think Mary was pointing out. And so what's visible from a sort of a design critical lens is what draws attention to the university's brand, how it can appear in the public space, how it can grab attention, either research attention or civic public attention and I think the work that's valued increasingly is stuff that can be easily put to that work of drawing attention and supporting the university brand value.
00:10:51 Beth
I think in terms of that brand value it brings us back really nicely to what's highly visible. and what we can measure, what we can see, how people will engage with that both internally and externally, but there's something else behind that which I think's already come up as well and that goes back I think to those relational and emotional engagements that we have when we're doing work that we may think actually is a good fit within those spaces and then perhaps it might not be. So I suppose I want to move us on a little bit to thinking more about the relational and the emotional aspects of invisible work and I wanted to ask if you're willing to share how that might have sort of shown up in your experience of university life.
00:11:40 John
Going back to the idea of degree shows and students having to go through that journey of becoming comfortable publishing themselves, making themselves visible through exhibition. But even in the learning space, I mean, there's this process of going out into the world and speaking out, being seen speaking in groups of other students. And I think visible work is also collective work. I think there's this learning, there's this building the resources for making oneself public that goes on.
00:12:18 Abigail
That really picks up because I think one of the pieces of work that I felt has too often been invisible, even though it has a very visible outcome, is the work that we do around educational engagement. So the work that we do beyond the university and I'm very lucky to have spent many, many years because I I'm very aware of myself in this space as a professor but I've always kind of felt slightly out of there in the fact that I came from a very different background to a lot of the people I saw around me when I came here. And so right from the beginning it was about going out into schools and helping young people to be themselves but also to find a voice. That work because because it falls between this sort of two pillar that we see particularly in the Russell Group universities that we have student education and I've seen again a massive increase of valuing the work that we do around student education because of things both externally and internally and because of measures, office for students measures, access and participation plan measures, NSS, National Student Survey, all of these things brilliantly and rightly made a step up because when I first came here, student education was kind of the bit that I'm going to gender it, the women did in quite a lot of the time at that time. I had many, many brilliant male colleagues who did that work, but we always noticed when we went to student education committees that there was a gender imbalance within that space. And then, but that became more visible and that is very much a pillar of our work. And then we got the research pillar. And there's a load of work that falls between those two that is about supporting what we do as researchers and what we do in the student learning and education space.
00:14:01 Mary
Picking up on your point with student support from a technician's perspective, I think technicians in AHC, probably more than pretty much any other faculty in the university from what I can tell, were heavily involved in supporting students in technical spaces. And because we work so closely with them for long periods of time, especially if they're working on a larger project in our spaces, and because we're not involved in their assessment, I think students often feel a bit more comfortable coming to us if they're struggling or in crisis. Thankfully, our Alex Vann, our faculty technical services manager, recently kind of arranged for bespoke training for us called Rapid that where we were invited all to participate in this and learn a bit more about.
So I'm posting to appropriate resources and being able to manage that and the emotional fallout that happens as a relative supporting somebody who's in crisis and knowing where to point them in a direction where they don't just then end up going in this crazy circle of just hot potato because it's like actually Bob isn't the person to talk to, you need to talk to this other person in this other office. We want to avoid that and make sure that students can get the help that they need right away. And then talking about what do we personally take on and how do we protect our own well-being and health in supporting students who are really struggling.
So I think that's been a really positive development over the last year, kind of recognising that technicians are often kind of the front line, just by the very nature of the work we do and the nature of the relationship that we have with students.
00:15:39 Abigail
It's getting better.
00:15:40 Mary
Yeah.
00:15:40 Abigail
But I think it's one of those challenges that when I work outside of the university within community and outreach services, there's a lot, I would say, much better embedded Safeguarding and support for colleagues who are doing that work, because things like disclosure, we will all have experienced a student coming to us and saying something, I think I reflected on this quite a lot when my daughter got to university age and suddenly I was like, oh crikey, oh yes, that's what we've been juggling all these years.
And that's why actually you walk away from some of those academic personal tutoring meetings or working in the technical space or degree show, often they'll talk to you when they're making work and they feel, and you think, how do I, what do I do with that? How do I, and then you worry, have I got it right? And I think the more we can put in absolutely those sorts of structures that help colleagues signpost and understand that it's, invisible often involves taking on a burden yourself and it's, you've got to find a way of dealing with that because otherwise that gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then you explode and that's no good for anybody.
00:16:53 Mary
Yeah, taking on that kind of emotional weight. of numerous students over the years and just not really having kind of a healthy outlet for that yourself as well.
00:17:02 Abigail
And staff.
00:17:03 Mary
And feeling like you're just shouldering all that and there's not really, there's nowhere for you to go. it's just, yeah, it's really good to have that recognition and support.
00:17:12 Abigail
Yeah. Students always know who they will identify. I mean, I think often when we work in studio spaces, concert spaces, theatre spaces, broadcast spaces, and as you say, our faculty is unusual in those very collaborative spaces. There are more, there are, in a classroom, there's less of a space to say how you feel or to ask a question. So, or they might grab you on the corridor. But actually, if you're in a theatre, a studio, a space like this podcast studio, students will often and colleagues will disclose things. And it's like, how do you deal with that?
00:17:52 John
Isn't there an expectation that the emotion is done privately, that you take that away and you recuperate? But I think Mary's maybe hinting that actually you go and have a chat with another colleague and share. share that work. And so that emotional work just kind of spreads and we're all doing it all the time, but a lot of us probably are doing it in private as well. And that's the difficult invisible recuperation. I guess it's more difficult for people that maybe haven't got the resources, their own emotional resources to process and do the work of recovering from emotional encounters with other people. And I guess that's maybe why, I think universities recognise learning is a psychologically challenging and threatening at times experience when you're risking being told, knowing that that's not right or you need to rethink who you are or what you feel about the world. That's quite a lot of work to be doing that week in, week out for a few years consistently.
00:19:02 Beth
I entirely agree. I think in terms of that emotional work, do you think there are particular groups, I know we've touched on perhaps roles and spaces, but do you think there are particular groups who seem to maybe perhaps bear more invisible work than others?
00:19:24 John
I think people that are already coming with the burden of, emotional work or damage or lower resources. I mean everybody's juggling different things, different life situations.
Reflecting on my own experience recently of poor health, I think people who have health problems are also doing a lot of invisible work of recuperation and there are lots of other dimensions to ability, disability, Hidden disabilities, that's right, yeah.
00:20:01 Abigail
I don't ever like to break it down of this particular, because I think we create these groups within universities to get the work done, so there are the groups of people who support teaching, there are the groups of people who support admissions, there's groups of people who support research, there are academics who move into, but I actually think within all of that systemized situation, there are people who elect maybe actively or in that, consciously or unconsciously to do the work that is deemed is found to be more invisible because it's who you are and it's what you, one of the reasons I'm in this educational world, I fell into it by mistake, one of the reasons I'm still here is because I absolutely love it. I want, you know, I like working with people, I like communicating, I like learning about people, you know, in whatever environment I've ever worked with in schools, prisons, universities, it's that environment of talking to people. So I will actively elect to do work that does bring with it a level of invisibility. And then I think there are other people who are much better at either not electing to do that or protecting themselves within that. And I think often when invisible work becomes visible, it's when we get frustrated because we can see that others are much more capable for whatever reason of protecting themselves and holding it. And then we're sort of running around doing it and going, but isn't everybody doing, where's my outlet? And I think that's another thing about being working outside the university. The first time someone said to me, right now we're going to have a meeting every week because I need to be, I need to ask you your safeguarding questions. I need to know, are you okay? And I think Yes, on corridors we might say to colleagues, are you okay? But actually to actively build in that are you okay time to the working week, that's something that I'm really taking out of. That's what actually participatory research, participatory learning really demands.
And we're not, we need to do more of that. We need to do more of recognising that those people who run towards it, fabulous. But we also have to create support structures for them.
00:22:19 Mary
I think, someone will say, I mean, I'm guilty of this as well. I'll send an e-mail to our math team and be like, hey, can you help me do a thing? And then they do it and they're like, yep, great, all done, Mary.
But what I don't see is all of the, okay, well, I have to talk to so-and-so in that area because they usually reply to my e-mail quickly and then I have to do this, but then I have to like fill out this form that specific way so that they get that and then, you know, this guy doesn't ignore it because I know if I worded that way, that guy's going to ignore it. There's so much of that happens.
00:22:46 Abigail
I think trust is really important in this subject area because I think when we talk about invisible, invisible, I think most of the time we do work and we trust because we're doing the best we can. And I think where we really need to do more of this work, and thank you for this podcast series, is recognising that the reason we have this binary between visible and invisible is often on this line around questions of trust
What are we doing and are we trusting that what we are doing will be recognised in a way that makes difference? And sometimes that is just someone saying thank you. And other times it's getting your loving promotion that you've deserved for a long time and feeling that you've walked into space where people are prepared to recognise through the promotions process what you're doing. And there's a sort of a long line of that. I'm all for the everyday thank yous. I think that's so important in terms of visible work.
00:23:49 Beth
Back in January we held a workshop and it was called Together We Rise and it was a faculty workshop held with women at Leeds but actually some of the really interesting, brilliant people who shared their thoughts, many of them said a very similar thing.
There's all sorts of different ways in which recognition works and sometimes that needs to be or can be every day, thank you, I see you, and other times it takes very different forms. But that point of recognition is so important. And I think in terms of trust, incredibly important in relation to invisible work, trusting that, as you said, your contributions will be acknowledged, that they will be recognised. I want to turn more toward any strategies or any experiences that you'd be happy to share in terms of how what maybe feels like invisible work or work that's not recognised so much has been recognised?
00:24:56 John
Thinking about what Mary was saying when she was talking about space, or I was picking up on the idea that sometimes maybe technicians are hidden in the background and some of the teaching spaces are more at the front and there's a kind of a theatre to university life. And again in our school there's the gallery space which is in some way the most forward-facing public space. We have staff and student exhibitions. I think there's talk also of foregrounding and bringing technicians as other creative practitioners into that space as well. And so I think one of the techniques or strategies is just thinking about who is at the background and bringing them forward rather like that sort of thank you at the end of a theatrical performance when people get brought through by the lead actors. I think there's a certain amount of theatre to performing the kind of appreciation and visibility. And it does actually require people who are at the front to bring others forward.
00:26:08 Mary
I have an excellent example of that. First off, a fun anecdote when it comes to saying thank you. One of my colleagues not too long ago, I was going through like a stressful time and I was just feeling so frustrated with things and And I come to my desk and I notice there's a little box of Maltesers on my desk with a little thank you note saying like, Mary, I really appreciate everything that you do. Thanks. Thank you. Just tearing up just thinking about it. Like small gestures like that just go such a long way. But building on John's point about those who are in front kind of like also bringing people out and letting them stand in the limelight a little bit. One of the professors I work most closely with, shout out to Stephen Russell. He has been really great at trying to kind of lift me up as a colleague. So there was a project we worked on a few years ago where I did, as a technician, I was assigned to that project. I did the bulk of the laboratory work and I helped write the article. And we published 2 papers where I was first author on those papers. And one of those papers has already been cited like 12 times. and in pretty high impact journals. And I mean, I think to think of a technician being first author on 2 high impact papers, I think there's a lot of people listening to this to be like, sorry, what? This really does not happen often. You often hear about these struggles of technicians even being acknowledged in the acknowledgement section.So I feel like those kinds of things and having academic colleagues recognize the contributions we can make, it's very much viewing it as we're all on the same team.We're all contributing to research and teaching excellence and how we contribute to that looks a bit different, but that doesn't mean that we have to be obsessed with like only people who are in this position do this thing. If you're working with people who have a natural affinity for something and you can see that they can contribute in that way, then like encourage that.
00:28:03 Abigail
I think absolutely.
00:28:04 Abigail
And I think one of the things around, particularly in our faculty, because so much of the work that we're now doing from a research point of view is broadly defined as participatory and it's absolutely outside of the institution.
And we keep, I mean, I keep encountering barriers where I'm saying, no, we have written this or we have created this. And so, but an editor will say, oh, no, you're, you know, we can only have academic.authors on that and I'm saying we won't publish with you and sometimes holding the line on that and actually saying this is the space where we're going to go and I mean using the podcast as a participatory output has allowed the voices because no one can take away from everybody's individual voice within that space and then bring it back into the university. I was lucky, I'm going to say lucky, I feel lucky that I was the first through on the grade 10 professorship route that's called academic leadership and it was a really It was a difficult process and it was a process that had come out of a lot of frustration and a lot of work that we've been doing at the university about what happens to those people that fall between the gaps that are really contributing at a very senior level but they don't. They can't be broadly defined just as research. And then we'd also done a teaching a scholarship route that the time just felt impossible. It was almost like that sense of, oh, we need to make it really hard. And there was no in between. And working with very senior colleagues from the human resources to say, how do we evidence this? And actually create a space where, and it comes back to what you were saying about communication, how do we create a space where someone can be supported?
And that's why we do lots of mentoring work people are going through these promotions exercises to say, what is your evidence? And often I'll sit with someone and they'll say, I've got nothing, I've got nothing on this. And I go, you did that. And they go, that doesn't count. Yes, it does count. And it's about the way of learning how to communicate what matters to you and your research or your teaching practice, your education engagement practice, your professional practice, how we communicate and evidence the difference that you make.
And then how we also train the promotions panels to recognise that difference looks different But we have to continue to support everybody to find ways to communicate, to make visible their work. So in participatory research we're using podcasting, we're using video, we're using photography, we're using zines, we're using collaborative writing. Within the university and within the very specific structures of motions we have to support all colleagues to think about how do you make visible, often through words,
And more and more we're trying to think about the ways, because we're dealing with lots of different neurodiversity, disability, how do we find the best ways to help people communicate actually the difference that they make? It is about also acknowledging what is the strategy of the organisation we work within and speaking to that and making visible the difference that we make in relationship to the strategy of the organisation that we're working within.
00:31:08 Beth
I think in terms of some of the discussions we've had today, thinking about the roles of mentoring, for example, thinking about the role of thanking people, thinking about the role of bringing people forward. I love the sort of front theatre, back theatre analogy that you brought in as well, John. There's so many helpful strategies you've shared today and I'm incredibly grateful for that. I think in the line sometimes as we've talked about is also important and ensuring that we take some time to care for ourselves and our communities together. Is there anything anyone would like to add?
00:31:51 Mary
I guess just one thing I wanted to mention before we close out was I think we're at a time as a university where there's a lot of change happening. Mergers, reorganisations, realignments. I just want to appeal to the decision makers out there who might be listening to us. If you're at a point where you're having to make a decision about a process or making something easier or not doing this anymore or starting something new, please, pretty please, consult the people who are on the ground doing the thing that you're making a decision about and just understand, try to understand the impact and the invisible work that's involved.
00:32:31 Abigail
I think that's absolutely but I also think we also need to remind ourselves if we feel safe and we've talked about safety and trust to step forward with that as well. I think one of the things I was going to think about is I think sometimes I've sometimes been accused of being, don't want to gender it but it has to be gendered, about being arrogant because I try very hard to be confident in the space where I'm offering support or advice. Behind it I'm thinking everybody thinks I'm an absolute idiot.
You know, I spend a lot of time talking to students about the fact I miss, I look, I hope I look like a swan dressed in black, a swan, but underneath I'm a duck going, everyone hates me, I don't belong here, I'm not, it's not right here. And we've talked to inauguals about never feeling like you quite belong.
And I think the problem with that is it means that you don't think that you have a voice and we as an institution need to continue to be better helping everybody feel safe.
00:33:29 John
Slightly different take. I'm thinking about those moments when maybe I don't feel I want to be visible, don't feel safe to be visible, and conscious that it feels like a constant demand. Not just the workload, but the processes of a university are about making things apparent to other people, to managers, making things clear, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with John Hall, who was a blind educator, who challenged me as an art student about my visual bias. And so one of the things that I've been thinking about, the importance of invisible, invisible work is paradoxically what those phrases might, what the blind spot of those phrases might also be. And I think there are a few of those themes about trust. The few things that we can't capturing visual metaphors that I think are important for me in this conversation.
00:34:31 Beth
Thanks John. Am I right in interpreting that you're also saying the blind spots in thinking about making that invisible work visible is that not everybody might want that work to be visible and they might not want themselves to be visible.
So respecting that while there's perhaps a principle that people shouldn't do work that's not recognised, individuals visibility is also something quite personal.
00:34:59 John
Absolutely. And there are sort of critiques of the language of visibility, touching on something you were saying earlier about maybe displacing the language of oppression or exploitation. So these words go alongside other words that maybe not visual, but the visual sometimes is metaphorical and comfortable and we need to keep on unpacking the visual and the invisible.
00:35:28 Beth
Thank you all so much. It has been an absolute honour to share this space, to have time to think about and discuss people's experiences and I'm incredibly grateful for you all sharing your time and your practices and some fabulous stories of your HE lives and what invisible work means within those. Thank you all so much.
