What I did on my Hulliday

Some reflections on my research visit to the University of Hull

When I was an undergrad considering doing a PhD, one of the things that appealed to me about academic work was the possibility of travel – to live and work in other countries. The other main career option that seemed to offer that possibility was working for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but my interest in that path soured pretty quickly when I realised that 1) I found Australian foreign policy deeply boring, and 2) I wouldn’t necessarily have control over where I would be posted.[1] Academic work, with its promise of fieldwork, immersion in archives, and visiting positions at institutions in countries related to my (then-undecided) research interests, seemed to offer both adventure and relative stability.

In practice, as many people who are drawn to academic work for similar reasons quickly learn, that promise is largely bullshit. Impossible job markets mean the lucky few who get jobs rarely get to choose where they go, while short-term precarious contracts mean as soon as you start to get settled in one place you have to reconcile yourself to moving again. When we do have jobs, low pay, limited funding for research, and exceptionally high workloads mean we often don’t actually have the time or money to do longer periods away for fieldwork or research visits. And unequal border regimes – visa processing queues, residency requirements, travel bans – mean research travel is more often than not the privilege of a Western-passported elite.

In this context, I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able to spend the last two months as a visiting researcher at the University of Hull, as part of my work for The Eurovisionaries Project. During my visit, I got to collaborate closely with the brilliant Catherine Baker, who went out of her way to make me feel welcome at the university. I particularly appreciated the opportunity to talk at length with someone who knows the deepest, niche-est ins and outs of Eurovision and its surrounding political issues – for large parts of my academic career, I have often been the only person in my department working on my topic, so I do not take the chance to nerd out with someone who thinks about something in a similar way for granted.

Catherine also helped facilitate various introductions, so I was able to meet with and learn about the research interests of people in disciplines ranging from history, gender studies, geography, American studies, musicology and sport science. As well as being excellent company, the conversations I had with these people were invaluable for opening up different ways of thinking about my own work and making connections that will help with my next round of focus groups and interviews. Presenting my own research and listening to other people’s presentations in seminar series run by the Hull Centre for Sustainability and Olympic Legacy and by the musicology department have pushed me to consider Eurovision more directly in relation to the Olympics and other mega-events; not just in an abstract “yeah they’re both friendly competitions among countries” way, but to pay closer attention to the subtle differences in the ways Eurovision and the Olympics position themselves as ‘non-political’ or ‘neutral’, and to the organisational structures and audience responses that allow them to maintain those claims across various, increasingly egregious political and moral situations. Because many of the people I met were involved in various ways with the Hull City of Culture programme in 2017, I was also able to think more about Eurovision in relation to other, non-competitive, non-international forms of mega-event – particularly in terms of the shorter- and longer-term effects these events have on the cities that host them.  

It should not have to be a privilege to do this kind of trip. Visiting the University of Hull has improved my work in multiple, measurable ways. It is rare for all the academics working on a particular topic to be located in the same place; we are scattered across the world, and sometimes we need to collaborate more closely. This is especially true for early career researchers, as we are often still building the friendships and collaborations (“networks”, if you must) that are essential for establishing our work.

Yet Western universities and the governments that fund them are not interested in creating the employment conditions that make this essential work possible. They profess to value the kind of internationalisation and research collaboration brought about such visits, and certainly take credit for any work borne from them, but to really be able to make the most of longer research trips, academics need stable, long-term employment and adequate workloads at their home institutions. If you’re on a one-year postdoc contract and it took all your energy, time and savings to move for that job, there’s no space to do a visiting position alongside it. If universities demand that research trips are paid for out of external grant funding, in a climate where most grants have success rates between 3-10%, then only a tiny fraction of the people who would benefit from such trips get to take them. If there are constraints on how much you can travel internationally because you’re on a residence permit/visa, or the places you want to go refuse to process your visa applications in time, international visits are off the table almost entirely. The further away you are from the centres of academic power in continental Europe and North America - if you’re a scholar based in the Global South or otherwise remotely located - the more these structural challenges compound to prevent opportunities to travel. How many ideas and collaborations are lost because our institutions demand internationalisation without providing any of the infrastructure to make it possible?

None of this is to say that we should be able to travel everywhere all the time. There are often vital ethical reasons to not, in Anna Gausco’s words, ‘go there’, and we have to consider much more seriously what kinds of harm our travel might cause.[2] There are also numerous reasons that researchers may not be able to travel, or simply may not want to, and we should be striving to make the benefits of close collaboration meaningfully available to everyone (eg not just a half-assed zoom camera in a corner, but well-planned, properly executed hybrid and online encounters). Yet my visit to Hull shaped my work in ways I could not have anticipated before I arrived, including renewing my commitment to do work that usefully sheds light on the ways the language of ‘non-politics’ obscures and represses political struggle. The ability to build relationships, learn new perspectives, be open to surprise experiences is essential work for thorough, well-rounded research. Whether we find those experiences through longer research trips or other forms of connection, the institutions that benefit from our work shouldn’t be the main obstacle to finding them.  

 Bonus: Museums, Markets and Minsters

I knew very little about Hull before going there, but it quickly became one of my favourite cities – easily walkable, vibrant city centre, extremely friendly people. I’m a little heartbroken I couldn’t stay for longer.

I strongly recommend visiting if you have the opportunity, and since the part of being an academic that younger me was most excited about was not, if you can believe it, criticising structural inequalities in higher education, but exploring new places, here is an overview of my favourite non-work things in Hull:

Museums

• The Deep

  • Aquarium on the Humber waterfront. Emphasis on conservation and education; well-designed, spacious habitats, and lots of supplementary exhibitions on the impact of climate change and human resource over-consumption on marine life. Also I just love sharks.

• Streetlife Museum

  • Local city life and transport museum. I love transport museums almost as much as I love sharks. Best exhibit is the room full of old carnival games, which you can play for 20p; honourable mention to the exhibit on the history of bicycles, which in my humble opinion are often unfairly overlooked in transport museums.

• Ferens Art Gallery and Wilberforce House Museum (history of slavery and abolition) also worth visiting

Food & Drink

• The People’s Republic

  • Left-leaning bar on Newland Avenue and home to my new favourite band, Buckfast Tramp. Their tradition is to work through a bottle of Buckfast over the course of their set, and how this doesn’t affect the quality of their performance is a mystery to me.

• Mancia

  • Sicilian restaurant also on Newland; Ben enjoyed the food here so much he hugged both the owner and the owner’s mum

• Thieving Harry’s

  • Café on Humber Street near the waterfront. Filthy brunch and one of the few places in the UK that does coffee to my exacting standards (coffee does not need to be, and in fact should not be, the same temperature as the surface of the sun, but UK baristas disagree, apparently).

• Barista

  • Best bacon roll on Newland.

 Other things

• Pearson park and The Avenues

  • Park and neighbourhood near where I stayed; very good duck to goose ratio in the park’s pond, and The Avenues is named for its long, tree-lined streets, ie the avenues, which are lovely for meandering through (snooping at posh houses) on Sunday afternoons.

• Beverley market and minster

  • Technically not in Hull, but only a half hour bus ride away – Beverley is the Eagleton to Hull’s Pawnee (a little posher, a little more quaint), but the Saturday market is lovely, and when we went the Minster had a bonus vintage fair going on

  • Hull Minster also regularly does various fairs to fundraise – I went to a craft market and a record market, while Ben stumbled on a rehearsal for a Whitney Houston tribute gig (!)

• Football

  • Cracking match between Hull City FC and Coventry. Low expectations because Hull City have been at risk of relegation all season while Coventry are towards the top of the ladder, but they finished 1-1. Made pals with the guy in the seat in front of us, who taught us some of the local chants and explained the track-records of various players. I am now a Hull City fan (please don’t tell anyone the only reason I know what terms like ‘relegation’ mean is because I’ve seen Ted Lasso).

Notes

[1] Now that I am (much) older and a more experienced traveller, visiting unfamiliar places is far less daunting, but as a 20-year-old university student who had never even been to Melbourne by herself at this point, let alone overseas, the prospect of being posted potentially anywhere was terrifying.

[2] Guasco, Anna. 2022. ‘On An Ethic of Not Going There’, The Geographical Journal, 188(3), pp.468-475.

Photos

1. University of Hull campus. The Faculty of Arts, Cultures and Education, where I was based during my stay, is located in the Larkin building (the long, 60s-era one in the centre of the photo that looks exactly like humanities buildings should look, imho).

2. The Deep, taken from Nelson Street, were the River Hull feeds into the Humber.

3. Newland Avenue

4. Ben trying to catch a tram at the Streetlife Museum

5. Rataxes the Rhino treating himself at Thieving Harry’s

6. Hull Minster - on this particular day there was a craft fair inside.