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You're listening to IOE Insights. The UCL Institute of Education podcast at University College London. This is Academia et al. The podcast for anyone and everyone figuring out life in academia. This is Academia et al. The podcast for early career academics. I am Zeinab El Khateeb. I'm a lecturer in teacher education at the UCL Faculty of Education and Society. In this series of episodes, we are going to hear stories about academic journeys, achievements and legacy, which we hope will inspire you to embark on your own adventure as an early career researcher. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Brian Irvine in the studio to share his experience. Brian is a research fellow at the Centre of Research in Autism and Education. He is also research, communication and engagement Officer and a member of Early Career Network. Brian, welcome to the podcast. Hello and welcome to the. Oh, it's so nice to be here. It really is. It's. I'm quite excited about this. Of course, we're all excited. You. Thank you so much for joining us. Just to start, it would be helpful if you could provide us the audience with an overview of your academic journey and progression to to the present date. Well, I'm an early career researcher, but how's the nicest way of putting this? I'm not early in my life anymore. I'm getting on a little bit because I did lots of other things before I came here. Um, so I started off, shall we say last century. Last century I trained as a teacher, uh, back in nineteen ninety six ninety seven at Oxford University. And I trained to be a religious education and philosophy teacher. So for those of you outside the UK, our religious education is one of those slightly mandated subject that no one in their right minds wants to teach. And hence the perfect thing for me to try and get across to sixteen year olds. This whole idea that we can interrogate the world around us to actually develop meaning, and somehow, through the mediation of our teachers, make some sort of sense with the wonderfully weird world in which we live. That was a long time ago. So I did that for a few years. Um, then I had babies, not personally, but we had babies. And then I stayed at home to look after the kids. So I spent about five, six, maybe seven years. Seven years of my life. Okay. Not just as a as a dad. That was brilliant. But I was also a childminder, so I had other people's babies and small children. I had five under-fives kind of attached to me, like body armour, just strapped on in different places, which was an amazing experience. And I suppose as a youngish man, one of the best crucibles for developing empathy you can have is having the care of these lovely little minds to try and help them again, make sense of the world around them, of course. So when my own kids went off to university to school, I decided at that point I was going to return to teaching. And since I'd done secondary school teaching, I was looking for a little bit of a challenge. So I became a teacher in an inclusion unit for autistic primary school boys and girls. And that was something I went into with very, very little knowledge or understanding or for that matter, training. But somehow I still got the job and spent. It was maternity cover, so I spent nearly two years there, um, actually working alongside ten young primary school kids as they tried to become part of their school community. And it was, um, that was just amazing. It was brilliant. It was one of those, um, almost pivotal times. Yes. I can imagine. And having been a, quite an exuberant secondary school teacher wanting to teach critical thinking in particular, I had to learn to switch off Brian so that my being, my personality didn't overflow and stop the vocalization, stop the, the ways of explaining themselves to the world that these young kids were part of. So it really was almost a meditative practice just to kill that enthusiasm, to stop being you. And it was a different form of me. So still me. Yes of course, but me that was paying more attention to the world because I needed to. And one of the things that I spotted back then was that these young children that I was working with had a beautiful relationship with the world. They were seeing more than I was. They were hearing more than I was. And it did mean they could access more of the beauty of the world. But the other side was they could also access more of the ugliness of the world. And that that position. I couldn't take it any further. My wife moved to jobs and she gets a house with her job. So I had to move jobs and she moved to become a chaplain of a university. And at that university, we were there a few months during which I had started to develop iPhone apps for helping kids get around school, get around shops, how to sort of navigate the world through pictorial exchange, communication system. And what year was that? This would be back about twenty eleven. Yes. So we're still talking a decade ago. Yeah. Um, and so my wife, she became part of the university and they were looking for an autism specialist to, um, mentor autistic university students. Big change from primary school. So it was still a really new, um, provision that was going, shall we say, emerging. It was coming together at the time. Yes, I can imagine. Yeah. So it was still the early days. And so I went and I became a specialist autism mentor. Now if you are in the UK and you are autistic, you can apply alongside your student loan for a grant. The disabled students allowance that pays to have an hour or two chatting to someone like me, which is really, really. It's brilliant. Good to know. Yeah. Yeah. So I did that for ten years, and after ten years, I suddenly realised there was very, very little written about this academic reflection on it. In fact, I think there was maybe six papers in the entire of the world written particularly about specialist autism mentoring. Um, of which two of them had me as a participant. So yeah, there was very little. So I managed to secure some funding to do a PhD in specialist autism mentoring. And I wrote a framework for all mentors. There's about a thousand of us that work in the UK, and it's hopefully out there to help those mentors think about and reflect on what they need to learn next to go through their journey as they develop this craft, which is a weird thing about being a mentor, sitting in a room trying to encourage wisdom. Mhm. Ah, there's something so, you know, teaching, it's all it's not all about the knowledge. A lot of it's about the knowledge. Being a coach, it's a lot about the skills. Absolutely. Being a mentor. Yeah. It's all about the wisdom. And maybe between the three of us there's quite a bit of university provision that makes that happen. And for that wisdom has to be the ability for people to be able to make their own rational choices, to become their own advocates. And I go around now talking with my comms hat on a lot about mentoring in higher education. I also am a researcher on the Superior Perceptual Capacity in Autism Project. Wow. Which is a lot, isn't it? Is I, I sleep well, that's what I do. I crash out big time and I do it all by doing it in four days a week. Um, and actually having an extra day of rest allows me to do my research stuff and my community engagement kind of stuff as well. So the research itself is, um, looking at the specificity and universality of perceptual capacity in autism. So as I said, with the kids that I was working with, I could see that they could hear more, see more sensible, they could perceive more of the world. And there's a whole chunk of data that my colleague, particularly Professor Remington and Doctor Jana Birkett, have put together, which actually shows that autistic people hear more, see more, sense more, feel more, which help you being a teacher back then, isn't it? Yeah. See the inside? Exactly. It was the insight together. Yeah. And unfortunately, fortunately, I don't know. Our schools are noisy, chaotic, vibrant places. Mhm. And it was it was it in London or. It was just outside London, just outside the M25, not a million miles away. Um, just about far enough outside of London where you have to buy a tweed jacket to blend in with the natives. Oh, dear. Um, so yeah, this research that I'm doing at Kray, um, we basically we have been interviewing autistic folk who have a learning disability, who are usually kept outside of research. And we do EEG experiments with autistic folk with a learning disability, who are left out, who are definitely left out of research in that kind of area. And we do this by taking stuff to them. We either push, um, our push wrong word, we share, we share our passport, which is our research passport. So not only do our participants all write down how they see the world, how they feel the world, what they're worried about in an interview, what their the other contacts in their family are, what their trusted adult is, the things they hate, the things they love. But we as researchers, we feel in ours as well. And they get to know that I really like a band called The Cure. That's more of a collaborative work, isn't it? Is it does. It tries to one side. It is holistic, isn't it? It is. It tries to balance that power dynamic of. Interviewee and interviewer. Um, so my colleague Freya Elise, um, had a paper out with the whole team a couple of months ago. Really worth your read. That's a good time. I will say my other colleague Jana, she and some of the interns that come to work with us at Cray have been going into schools and have been taking EEG stuff into schools. And actually the folk that they've been working with in sort of sixteen to twenty five year old provisions, have just done an amazing job of being able to help each other, put on the EEG helmets and doing it collectively. It's a much more gentle way of doing stuff that tries to get rid of some pandemic, isn't it? I can imagine. Indeed. Yeah. And it makes you data more valid as well. Yes. Because they're more honest, more transparent. And it also helps us to think about the universality of this perceptual capacity. So far, we only knew that autistic people who would tell us about it had this way of seeing more and hearing more and feeling more. But now we have, I think, reasonable data that says this is part of what it means to be autistic deep down, no matter whether there's a learning disability or not. So really exciting stuff. I'm definitely going to read the paper. Definitely looking forward to it. Thank you. That was a really long answer. There we go. No it's good. I did. This is the problem when you when you're old and you're an early career researcher. Unpacking the background. Excellent. Lovely. And that actually takes us very smoothly to the next topic, if you will. Did I segue it nicely for you? Yeah. Very nice. Absolutely. You touched on in a lot of elements here, which professional accomplishment, which you have touched on it already or initiative. Do you consider was the most significant to date? You've mentioned so many of them. I mean, I would say being a dad, it was the only time where something happened where I realized I there was an ontological change and that was fatherhood. And it changed the way that I saw the world change direction in life, isn't it? I will also say I probably gained a few empathy points along the way as well. You know, I was, you know, as many young men are, the emotional depth of a teaspoon and suddenly your own babies come on and you grow, your life changes. Oh, it really does. Yeah. So they're the ones priority changed, isn't it? Very much. Yes. It goes away from being priorities about the self. Yeah. To priorities about facing outwards, which changes how you think about the entire world. So I now have colleagues. In fact, one of the reasons I ended up at Cray was because there was a maternity leave. And so I came in just to sort of help fill a gap and as a children related again, isn't it? Yeah, it is. But also I see in my colleagues who are academics working at university with little children, it makes them better, happier, I guess. Not sure it makes them happier. I mean, if you come across children that are screaming monsters, but there's something that makes them fuller as people. And actually, I think UCL does a reasonable enough job. Yeah, of course we could always do better of supporting, particularly mums, but sometimes dads as well. How we juggle these ways of being, which is about passing on who we are to the next generation in very, very straightforward ways, but also about how we try to make the world better for the next generations to fill it up. And, you know, I definitely being a dad. Yeah. But also I want to expand that to if there are early career researchers who are thinking about parenthood, it shouldn't demolish who you are as a researcher. It should build it together in a really constructive way. Yeah, definitely. Because you have that purpose, isn't it? It is aim in life. There's a lovely paper that came out last year which looked at, uh, life satisfaction versus life purpose. And they found statistically, those who have a purpose live have a better quality of life, and potentially even live longer than those who just have satisfaction. So we're not talking about a satisfactory life. We're not talking about being satisfactory researchers. We are talking about having purposes in not just the things that we research, but our wider lives as well. Of course, it's all interrelated. If you think about it, you can't separate it from two, isn't it? But, you know, being a father or being a mother and so on. And that's why I get straight into assemblage theory where everything's interrelated so much honestly, particularly, you know, this as an education researcher trying to pull things apart, it's difficult. It is not meant to be separated. No, I think so. Yeah. Do like the whole concept of, um, not just the sort of under underground, the correlating rhizomes of all culture and being, but the way that sometimes things encroach upon other territories. So yeah, I knew this as a, as a teacher. Um, this is going to date how long ago? I was a teacher. Tamagotchis. You know those little technical eggs that you used to look after as a small chicks? Yeah I do, yes, yes, of course. And suddenly they became part of the school fabric. And I had this box which my form would leave their tamagotchis in, and I'd help feed them at break time and lunch times. I didn't think teachers that just let virtual pets die. I didn't think they were doing a good job. So we do that. But then we got to talk about parenting. We talked about care. We talked about empathy, we talked about love in classrooms. And it was that you can relate it to science as well. Science education indeed. Yeah. Well, I was a philosopher. Don't ever try and get me to do stuff on science. What is knowledge doesn't ever work. But this sort of ebb and flow of what is important to children's life and education. I think assemblage theory is really a good way of thinking about it. Unfortunately, it doesn't have any clear answers. No, that's why we research. Yeah, we'll continue to research to find an answer. I was having a lovely chat with a colleague just before I came here. Who's going to go into a school to talk about research itself to, you know, we'll be interviewing some of the young people there. And he was going, well, what do I do? Do I go and tell them, we're researchers? We don't know anything. And I said, yes, yes. They've got teachers in their life who are supposed to know stuff. Go in there. How about the school life? Yeah, go in there and be the researcher who says, fundamentally, we're not sure. And actually that kind of honesty will have them on your side before you know it. Yeah, yeah. And that's the whole purpose of the research to find out. Exactly. And examining. Yeah. And then once we found it out, we wait two or three years and we realised we were wrong. Because another research. Oh yeah, it does. And this is how it should be. Oh dear. It's an ongoing yeah. Investigation. I guess if you want to be right, maybe this isn't the place for you. If you want to be accurate and know as much as it is possible to. And you have that beautifully humble approach to being a researcher. You'll be fine. Absolutely. Be a learner. Yeah, very much so. Learning about learning. Yes, absolutely. I agree. And sometimes I learn about learning about learning. I don't know how deep it goes. We are learning at the end of the day. All right. So was there any individual who inspired your intellectual development? I know you talked about being a father and children and school children with autism, but were there any individual or particular individual that inspire your intellectual development? And did you research, focus, and align with the interests? Doesn't have to be, but okay. So, uh, multi-layered question. This is going back quite some time. Yes. Of course. This was a journey. So yeah, this was my tutor back in university. So we are talking nineteen ninety four and that was University of Oxford. No, this was before Oxford. This was King's College London. Oh, wow. And I just happened to have the amazing professor Colin Gunton as my personal tutor. So I was studying theology, um, which is a strange discipline to have started with before ending up as an educational, potentially social scientist. You know, it happens. It does. Um, so I would in these amazing tutor sessions, Colin would sit down with me and we'd start to talk about cricket. And occasionally we would just stop talking and listen to the radio. And then he would ask me about not just who I, what I was thinking, but who I was. And there was this deep part of. The way that I was taught how to learn, which is knowledge, wisdom. We don't just accumulate it and put it on as an outside shell. It's actually about part of who we are. And so this, you know, this will mean very little to people outside the field. A great barthian theologian who at the heart of his thinking, it was all about how things could become apparent, how we can't always enforce knowledge upon stuff, but sometimes the world as we know it opens up to us. And that opening up that, in his words, was revelation. That whole opening up really grounded us in how we saw the world. Now that I came across some thirty odd years ago, and it sat with me, that I cannot impose myself upon knowledge. And so I've ended up in a very participatory research field where We're actually. I've got to wait for the unfolding of knowledge to happen in front of me. I put myself in the way of it. But the questions I will ask are probably wrong questions. The answers that I hear, I probably will misunderstand. And so I have to go back to I mentioned this earlier that this whole idea of humility in what I am as a researcher and know that I don't know deep down, and only then can I actually listen properly. And you may have heard and worked out from the last twenty minutes or so. Listening is hard. I'm great at talking. Yeah, no, honestly, I must say there's something about King's College because I did my master's at King's College. Amazing. Actually sparks me from there. Yeah, yeah. So we have that common. I agree with you. When you're at King's, did they teach you to refer to UCL as the godless institution of Gower Street? It's still ethically it's still a thing. So Kings was set up in opposition to UCL because UCL didn't have a theology department and studying theology across at King's it was how UCL was referred to. And so I was here. I was just about to sign my contract. And that phrase, the godless institution of Gower Street came across my mind and I thought, oh, they're going to pay me, isn't it? It's worth it. Excellent, lovely. That's really interesting, honestly. All right. Um, last but not least, what academic advice do you have for early career researchers like myself and others as well that include the staff and students to achieve their success? One of the really useful things that we did at Cray, um, not not long after I arrived, there was a session on how to say no to stuff. Um, and it is really, really hard, I think as an early career researcher When you're asked to do. Could you review this chapter? Could you review this paper? Could you be involved in this? Could you be on to be able to say no? I'm really glad that I had that training and how to say no so that I still say yes to everything, but I still say yes to everything. But having that training just allows me to say yes with integrity, of course. So I still think that we as early career researchers, we should take every opportunity that comes our way. You know, if we're invited to do a podcast, we just say, yay, just go for it. Go for it. Yeah. But at the same time, bear in mind, there are ways have they said in the training when to say no, when to say yes, or they just left it open subject to the situation they did anticipation. Yeah. It was a lot about a sort of balance. Yeah. About how we can say no so that we protect ourselves. But we also know when to say yes so that we can actually let the community of learners that we are becoming part of grow and flourish, which is why I personally think that reviewing papers is an amazing honor and privilege. And sometimes we have great papers that come across our desk and we think, yes, there is a part of me that I think I've learned now, which is when I am reviewing papers, if it is a good enough paper just to say, yeah, that paper's worthy. And as long as there's no major flaws just to say, hell yeah, that paper deserves to be out there. There's also that bit about how do we police against papers that are a little bit still informative process. There we go. That was a kind saying. Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us today. It has been an absolute pleasure. Honestly, it's been very informative and very interesting. Please follow the link in the show notes to find out more about Doctor Brian Irvine's work, as well as discover more podcasts from the IOE. And if you like what you've heard today, please give the podcast a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This will help us to reach more listeners who may also enjoy the podcast. I am Zeinab and thank you for listening. Have a good day. Academia et al is brought to you by the IOE's Early Career Network and IOE Marketing and Communications. The podcast is presented by Zeinab El Khateeb The theme music was composed by Ronnie Zhu. Editing by Teresa Baker of UCL Educational Media, and Jason Ilagan is the executive producer of the IOE podcast. Thanks for listening. Search IOE Insights for more podcasts from the IOE.