Over the past year, the IFF Research Database Task Group has been hard at work updating and improving the searchability of the articles on the Feldenkrais Method on the Zotero database which other members before us have accumulated over the years.
Please join us as we present the new updated Zotero database on 9pm Central European Daylight Time (CEDT) Sunday 26th June 2022 Registration is via mail to iffrg-events@feldenkrais-method.org
At the start of last year, the research database task group came together to see how we could improve the searchability, the functionality and update the articles in Zotero database on the IFF website.
For the past year, the IFF research database task group has been hard at work going through each article. There are currently around 800 articles on the database.
Interdisciplinary research has been in vogue in academic circles and among funding agencies for some years with varying degrees of success in achieving and promoting it. In the past, it has been uncommon for scholars and researchers to stray out of the disciplines in which they were trained, organised as they often are in socially isolated tertiary departments and faculties. Thus the social organisation of academic life has led to ‘silos’ of learning in higher education in many places.
Theresa Sawicka PhD
Prior to my recent retirement from formal academic life I was a university administrator: I worked in two universities in New Zealand as both a Director of a Graduate School and as an Associate Director of a Research Office. Originally trained as a Cultural Anthropologist I worked as a Research Fellow on various research projects and prior to that on my PhD. I graduated as a Feldenkrais practitioner in 2010.
It takes a long time to train an academic researcher, even post-PhD, to a level of expertise where a research programme based on a significant research question(s) can really develop. So it is hardly surprising that many researchers after years in training choose to stick to research areas that they have been trained within.
There are a number of other barriers too. To maintain scholarly expertise in several disciplines requires particular and uncommon intellects. The current rate of increase in academic publication alone is staggering, brought about partly by the ‘publish or perish’ conundrum as scholars and researchers are pushed to demonstrate they are actively engaged in research in the tenure system of academic promotion.