A couple of years ago, I applied to research a PhD in 3-D cyber-Islamic environments, using a methodological approach known as autoethnography. Sadly, it never got past the application stage. I was chronically ill, there were political issues (my principle supervisor was the object of secret service surveillance), the University I applied to didn’t award it’s own PhDs (the awarding university didn’t even have a religious studies department), and there was the further problem that my first degree is a 2:2.
The University I applied to is very small and the application thus proceeded at a snail’s pace. During the many months of waiting, I began to have second and third thoughts. My supervisor, despite being a talented ethnographer who has written some excellent academic papers in his field, turned out to be more of an academic careerist than I realised. He readily endorsed a culture of mindless hoop jumping and one of his books is so mediocre, it would be hard to believe it was written for any other reason than to pad out his CV. I began to wonder what a PhD had to offer that I couldn’t gain independently of professional academia. In the end, I just said forget it.
Rather than focus on a single research topic, I decided to go on an intellectual and spiritual adventure. I took in a wide spectrum of social theory, began to explore the roots of my own Islamic faith, and investigated my political outlook. My website leapfrogged over itself in a bid to keep up with my changing interests and views. Finally, having orbited the planet several times and considered the form of the continents and oceans from a perusing distance, a desire to land and investigate just a small piece of the world began to emerge, a place of study and reflection I could make my own.
Specialisation seems a more useful way to go on. Ethically speaking, I am a believer in cultural evolution. We must live as if we mean to make the world a better place than we found it, even if much of it is still a hell whole, whether it be through our character or our professional achievements.
I have to confess, when it comes to specialisation and close study, I find the boundaries of academia supportive and disciplining of my efforts. I’m due to start a modular research-based part-time MA in September, on Religion and Education in Contemporary Society. I therefore need to focus my reading and interests so that I can establish a base of expertise to work from in the future, perhaps teaching either in Further or Higher Education.
I remain interested in 3-D cyber-religious environments, and I continue to be interested in autoethnography as a methodology. But I also enjoy aspects of discourse analysis, particularly the debates surrounding the meaning and use of the concept ‘religion’, as well as more pedestrian topics, such as sex education, which is something of a hot topic in Britain at the moment, if you’ll excuse the pun. The trouble is, with so many fascinating interests facing me, I am having trouble picking just one.
In the end, considering all the roads open to me, I am hopping with 3-D cyber-religious environments. There is plenty of room for discourse analysis, autoethnography and education here (3-D CREs are a potentially fabulous educational resource). It’’s a research topic that necessitates both fieldwork and text-based research. And, in my opinion, it’s the future.
