Groundwater and Beyond

‘Outreach’ is an important aspect of your work. Communicating what you are doing and what has been the learning from your work is quite important. This article is a reflection of my initiative to write a blog while I journeyed through the PhD programme and in the process create a narrative or more suitably a synthesis of thoughts, analysis, reflections and commentary on the experiences- micro and macro, local and regional, personal and public that you gain as part of the academic programme like a PhD.

Your thesis is very important but is only read by a few people- your supervisors, examiners and in some cases, colleagues, or friends/parents. It sits in the library or repository of your university. While accessible, it is often difficult to read or refer that document which may be written for a specific academic setting. It is often exhaustive, and someone who wants to understand what you are planning to communicate

The other way to make your work travel is through research publications. Again, while not lengthy and exhaustive like a thesis, they are in academic journals and often written within a limited space which may not necessarily enable you to spell out everything. Again, many of them are paywalled or difficult to access if you are not part of an academic institutions. More importantly, they may be theorised and ‘jargonist’ in their structure which may restrict its accessibility to a certain audience.

What better way than to communicate your work as you move through your PhD and build all that understanding which will eventually result in a ‘thesis’ and you being awarded the degree. More importantly, such a communication matters on three aspects:

1. It makes your work accessible to a larger audience, helps address barriers of language, word limits, when is it brought out (yes, I know many PhD publications are brought out only after some years the degree is awarded, of course no to blame the researcher, the academic enterprise seems demanding). It makes you possible to situate your thinking and enables you to develop your ideas.

2. You get a chance to move beyond ‘structured’ writing that is often an expectation in academia to a more free flow, stream of consciousness, narration type of writing that may suit the purpose. This benefits certain type of readership (I love reading these type).

3. You engage in a dialogue- it opens opportunities for networks, discussions and comments from people in your work sector.

Building on this understanding, my observations and reflections during and after the fieldwork were discussed through blog posts. These blog posts, many of which were in Marathi, facilitated me in my writing process as I straddled the language barriers, focusing on thinking about groundwater. I contributed a total of 18 blog posts during the year 2022 and 2023, which garnered 1209 and 1372 visitors respectively from over 45 countries. Some of these posts garnered discussion on various social media platforms where they were shared (Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp groups). This also enabled wider engagement through social media platforms with fellow PhD researchers, faculty members and practitioners to dialogue, discuss and build a groundwater community network.