On Being a Researcher (Keynote Address for Oct 31 2025 ASU Undergraduate Research Symposium)

I wanted to turn down this invitation to be the speaker today. I wanted to turn it down, because I don’t feel like a researcher. Not really. Sure, I have conducted a few studies and have published the results. I have written books about research. But I feel sort of like an imposter. I wonder if you—some of you, at least—feel the same way. 

I think the problem is that I learned in college that research is a very serious activity. Research follows methods that have long and complicated names, such as “Foucauldian analysis,” and it answers arcane philosophical questions such as “What does it really mean to be happy?” The process, I’d learned, is painstaking and tedious and every step must be followed exactly—that research is sort of like building a spaceship using tweezers. If it comes easily or if it seems fun, then you’re probably doing it wrong.

But that hasn’t been my experience with research. Perhaps I’m doing it wrong. So, keep that in the back of your mind as I share what it is I have to share with you today.

To repeat just in case I’ve been unclear: I stand before you today not as an expert researcher here to tell you what you ought to be doing. I’m just a guy who is mostly interested in writing and who has some experience conducting original research. 

And so, I want to look with you today at what it means to be a researcher—or who one is when one is a researcher. This is called an “ontological hermeneutic analysis,” but don’t hold that against me. I didn’t invent the name. In particular, I want to describe being a researcher in those moments when a person is most like a researcher. Therefore, having lots of research publications only indicates that a person was at one time a researcher. A long CV says nothing about whether one can continue being a researcher. We are all of us capable of being researchers. The ground is leveled.

The method I’m using today comes from Germany—specifically the works of Martin Heidegger and Hans Georg Gadamer. But don’t worry, there won’t be a test on this. I just want to give credit where it is due. 

Charcoal Sketch of Heidegger

In his analysis of being human, Heidegger describes what he calls the “care structure.” For the purpose of today’s talk, we can understand that our being as humans is different from the being of calculators and SPSS programs. We can imagine a human person who is very much like a calculator. Who can compute sums and fractions and standard deviations in their heads without making mistakes. We might even celebrate this person as being brilliant. Still, they would fail to be a researcher in very basic and essential ways. You see, you and I participate in research in ways that the calculator—or the human calculator—cannot. For instance, we wait expectantly for the result. Our mood can rise and fall with p-values. We are excited by possibility, and we want to better understand the world in which we live. The results matter to us because we care. We bring caring with us wherever we go. To understand being researchers, we must understand how caring fits in. Indeed, it wouldn’t be a study worth publishing if nobody cared about the results. Indeed, an important part of evaluating the quality of a study is assessing how important it is to society. The calculator, well, it can only calculate.

 

Today I want to talk about what it means to be a researcher—that is, as an essentially human process.

Heidegger’s care structure comprises three parts, which I will define in turn. I’ve taken a few liberties to hopefully aid you in understanding what they mean:

• ·      Authenticity: this is characterized by openness to possibility. In research, examples include creativity, curiosity, exploration, and discovery. 
• ·      Constraints and limitations: these are strengths and weaknesses, past experiences, the mentorship we have or are lacking, and so on that lay the foundation for our research capability.
• ·      Herd mentality: This is “Doing it the right way;” following convention, research methods, and techniques and skills used during the research process.

Note how it’s possible to get trapped in any one of these. The authenticity-driven researcher explores foreign horizons, but they’re so far gone beyond the periphery that nobody can understand what they’re doing. They bring back their discoveries, and there isn’t a language to communicate them. The researcher focused only on their limitations and constraints feels sorry for themselves. “I’ll never be a great researcher,” they say, “because mathematical analysis doesn’t come easily to me. I had better settle on being a mediocre researcher.” And the Type-A conformity-driven researcher is anxious about following all the rules. They do only that which has already been done. They are incapable of genuine novelty.   

Being a researcher requires each of these in balance. We cannot escape our circumstances and limitations, and publicizing our work requires that we follow convention. But if we were to describe what it means to be a researcher, I suspect we would find it in the first bullet-point: authenticity. That’s how you and I are different from calculators. 

Development of a Researcher

Now, it just so happens that I am writing a book about human development. In it I follow clinical psychologist Richard Knowles (1985) in describing Erik Erikson’s (1994) familiar psycho-social stages of the human lifespan using Heidegger’s care structure. In doing so I describe how what it means to be human changes as we grow up. Now I will turn that analysis towards the development of the researcher.

Hope

Hope belongs to the earliest social need to belong. Infants either trust that their environment is safe and that they can relax, or they remain stiff and withdrawn and tragically suffer from shriveled spinal cords (Harris, 2004). Hope is something we experience bodily. Take a moment right now to experience the difference between a relaxed abdomen and a tightened one—like a python is wrapped around your midsection. With hope, a person is open to uncertainty and possibility; they are open to whatever comes, and they are free to use their skills for thinking and observation. The hopeless person is defensive, closed off, and under tremendous strain. Keep in mind that we can relate this to the process of being researchers—that is, we can be hopeful or hopeless.

In adulthood, hope is different. Rather than trusting that the world will accept us as persons, in adulthood hope is saying yes to (that is, it is trusting) others, loved ones, projects, careers, and so on. As researchers, hope is the ability to say “yes” to a new research project without having any guarantees that the project will work out—that it will “payoff,” in a manner of speaking. Hope means giving a project the time it needs without rushing it along or smothering it. 

As mentors, this means providing space for students to grow and develop as researchers themselves without sighing disappointedly and without doing the work for them. Sighing disappointedly or doing the work for them would be the opposite of creating space for students to grow as researchers. 

As students, this means jumping into the process with both feet without knowing how deep the water is. It is impossible to know where a line of inquiry will lead you. History is filled with examples of one-year projects that turned into entire careers. Psychologist Martin Seligman is one of my favorite examples. To summarize his career: in graduate school he conducted an experiment that challenged fifty years of American psychological theory. An impressive feather in his cap, wouldn’t you say? But it took him years and years to fully appreciate and understand just what he had done. Today he is responsible for the most rapidly growing theory of clinical psychology in the world—positive psychology. Students: that could be you. Or have you already placed little imaginary limits on what you’re capable of?

Colleagues: That could also be you.

Moving on to Will

In childhood, will is what accompanies a toddler when they explore what they can do today that they couldn’t do yesterday. In adulthood, willingness extends to your and my responsibilities. Being willing means taking partial ownership for these responsibilities. As a willing teacher, I do not begrudgingly accept the duty of designing thoughtful classroom activities—I take this work on as part of my identity as teacher. Yes, the university and the students expect of me a certain level of commitment, but I too want this for myself. I am willing to teach.

Students: think now of the projects that you will be proposing shortly. Think of the months of IRB-applications, data collections, and paper-writing that await you: these are the responsibilities of the undergraduate researcher. But will you accept them as a part of your emerging identity as researcher? Think of that: to be grateful to learn how to conduct an—I don’t know, t-test—or calculate a correlation coefficient, because these are analytic skills of a researcher, and they are therefore part of who you will become.

Colleagues: I know that many of you—maybe even most of you—do not have the time to maintain an active research program. I know this, because, in many cases, you’ve told me. Are you willing to be a researcher? If so, then part of that is wanting to make time for it for yourself. (By the way, I am not pointing fingers. I make a poor example of a willing researcher. I am a willing writer, and I more or less begrudgingly do the research bit as an excuse to do more writing.)

Now, it would be a mistake to confuse willingness with willpower. Willpower is effort—usually of the beads-of-sweat-on-forehead variety—without trust. Willpower is putting your head down and muscling through your project without listening, without learning, without responding, and without benefiting from others. It’s the researcher who has stopped noticing things, and who has stopped interacting with the world. I have many personal examples of this, so feel free to ask during the Q and A period.

Next is Imagination

One of the most exciting periods of research is the early part where anything is possible. I personally think through the life of a book project well before I’ve sat down to write it. I imagine it in print, the audience who reads it, the questions I get from interested colleagues, and the book the follows it. I am awash in a warm glow of optimism and cheerfulness. It’s a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

But dreams without a plan of action amount to nothing more than fantasies. Fantasy means getting lost in what could be without ever experiencing what is. I suspect that many of you students are imagining what life will be like once you have completed this project—or once you have obtained your bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, doctorate, and so on. You imagine how the world will look at you differently, and how the world will look differently to you. What I’m saying is, “Don’t stop there. Think right now about what you can be doing to make that future happen.

I recently had this problem with a book I’ve been writing. I began it almost seven years ago, but it wasn’t right. I had even obtained a contract, but something about it felt off—felt off about the book that is, the contract was fine. I had a fantasy for what I wanted the book to be, but I didn’t understand what sorts of revisions it was going to require. I didn’t know what to do. And so, the book sat. I took it out once a year and looked at it and smiled, but then I’d get a few chapters in and become overwhelmed, because it was wrong and I didn’t know why. Then one day—this August, I think it was—I figured it out. I discovered the mistake I had made, which meant I knew how to revise the manuscript. Suddenly the book project transformed from a pie-in-the-sky fantasy into a real, achievable goal. That is imagination.

Now, I can’t really translate this into a bit of advice for you all, because I don’t know what your goals are. I don’t know what you want to become or how research will fit into that. I guess what I can suggest is that you go beyond having dreams: begin thinking today about what you can do to take one step closer to that dream. Then another. Then another.

Competence

As a teacher, I am willing to support the intellectual but also the emotional and social growth of my students. We saw already that this means I adopt these general goals as my own. But I cannot stop there. I must also develop the skills necessary to support these goals. If I don’t, then I would have a sure recipe for disappointment. 

There are many, many skills that go into being a first-rate researcher. And two first-rate researchers may share few skills in common. The sort of imaginative and divergent thinking that makes a good philosopher is quite different from the convergent and analytic thinking that makes a good experimenter. To students: which skills will you develop? What kind of researcher will you become?

Dr. Osakwe and her team at the Center and all the mentors here have indicated to you and will continue to indicate the skills we think you’ll need to learn in order to be excellent researchers and scholars. These will include ethical considerations and training, research methods, analytic tools, and even how to write a good research abstract. Each is a valuable skill in the researcher tool chest. 

For my colleagues: Are you an effective mentor? What are the skills that you will develop that will improve the quality of the mentorship you provide. And, by the way, I think it would be a mistake to follow general advice on mentoring, because doing so would ignore your skills and intuitions as a researcher. This is a scenario for which your mentees have something to teach you. Here is a question you might ask, “What is something I could be doing for you that would help make your learning experience better?”

Finally, Fidelity

The last stage of development within the care structure that I’ll talk about today is fidelity. Fidelity is what remains of commitment after the promise has lost its promise.

It’s easy to work on a project when the novelty is there. I always ride a research high after getting an article published or after spending a weekend getting inspired by fellow researchers in my discipline. Students: you might be chomping excitedly at the bit after this symposium to go out and collect your data. But the enthusiasm won’t last forever. You’ll find many, many hours of thankless work waiting for you. No fireworks or confetti or handsome keynote speakers will be there to encourage and motivate you. What I mean is that there will be onerous, boring, and tedious work to do: will you stay faithful to your project?

Of the twelve or so students I have worked with over the years, only three have shown fidelity. Everybody is eager at the beginning. Everybody is ambitious and optimistic. Proposals are submitted, and there is an endless supply of creativity. But then months go by without correspondence. Deadlines are missed. Time ticks by until it’s ten days before the Spring Symposium, and the IRB application still hasn’t been submitted. It will happen to many of you unless you choose to remain faithful to your project. It’s easy to remain faithful when it feels good and is exciting. It’s something else to remain dutifully committed when the project has become a chore.

Colleagues: The research and especially the publication process is lengthy and work-intensive. Your projects need a champion to fight for them. I suspect that for every PhD in here there are at least two unpublished papers. Maybe you’ve collected the data but still need to write the manuscript. Or maybe you’ve written the manuscript and received a rejection. Or maybe it’s something else. These are the forgotten projects—forgotten because their promise has faded. (Students: does it surprise you to learn that many of your professors, even your mentors, procrastinate or find excuses to miss deadlines?)

I hasten to add that my talk today is not held together with any sort of ethical glue. My purpose is not to denigrate or judge. I began today by admitting that I am a poor representative of the mature and fully developed researcher. I drag my heels during every step of the process. I rush through revisions, and it has been a long while since I have really immersed myself in descriptive data while trying to understand a phenomenon. 

Postscript: On Creative Scholarship and Research in the Humanities

I want to end today with an invitation to my colleagues and their students in the humanities. I’m thinking specifically about English, fine arts, history—disciplines in which important scholarship is happening. The Association of American Colleges and Universities—which is the association responsible for naming undergraduate research a high impact practice—admits that these disciplines are often ignored in research settings. There is a bias that favors the natural sciences, and that favors data collection and analysis. 

But listen to the rationale the AAC&U gives for undergraduate research: “The goal is to involve students with actively contested questions, empirical observation, cutting-edge technologies, and the sense of excitement that comes from working to answer important questions.” 

Now, it seems to me like that can be achieved with more than carefully planned research projects. I’m envisioning a future panel of undergraduates who focus on, say, what popular television programming tells us about how our social values have changed. On what the current iteration of Captain America or Captain Marvel signifies about culture, sexuality, and race. How aesthetics and design enrich our lives in significant yet subtle ways. Or even existential analyses of what it means to be a researcher. I don’t know about you, but next year I want to attend the humanities panel.

Thank you.

Photo taken by Dr. M. L. Collins