Intentionality in research through public scholarship: An interview with Anne Charity Hudley

We are honored to feature a conversation with Professor Anne Charity Hudley at Stanford Graduate School of Education on the value of public scholarship, as well as the purpose of research at large. As a leading expert in education and linguistics, Dr. Charity Hudley has been working on a number of projects that aim to use research/knowledge for a broader purpose in education. We are grateful for Dr. Charity Hudley sharing her time and perspectives. 

Minju Choi (MC): Dean Charity Hudley, we’re super excited to hear your valuable perspectives on the role of public scholarship. To start off our conversation, how would you define public scholarship work?

Anne Charity Hudley (ACH): My primary interest is doing research that is tangible and usable in specific contexts. So I see a baseline difference for public scholarship in that there is research that didn’t have a version or audience in mind in its initial design/conceptualization and research that has a general public in mind from the start, whether it be students, teachers, or policymakers. For me, public scholarship means that I use a community-based participatory method for pretty much all the research I do, and I have for years, which involves community partners, students of different backgrounds and perspectives, and thinking about the research, design, methodology, and dissemination. 

MC: In your view, what should we try to achieve with public scholarship? How can we reframe what public scholarship means?

ACH: I think we need to be more honest with ourselves about who the work is for, who benefits from it, and make this goal specific. This means if you’re sitting down to write an article or a book, being very serious about the research design and thinking how I can make this tangible and interesting. I don’t really think that you can do a comprehensive level of public scholarship if you don’t have that intentionality from the start. We have to start thinking about how this intentionality is central to the research design, really honestly and truly. That is not to say that you shouldn’t do different types of research that are more academic, but this public-oriented work actually pushes the research to be stronger. There is a misconception that not everything is for the general public. Well, actually if you are in the school of education and trying to do this in service of others, it doesn’t make sense to not think about teachers in schools, students in classrooms, or policymakers in your work. You’re not doing what you’re actually saying you’re doing; you’re mostly just writing for academics. That’s my real pushback on it. 

MC: Could you please tell us about specific ways in which you engaged in public scholarship in your research? What are some of your current/past projects that demonstrate a way of engaging in public scholarship?

ACH: My focus as a linguist is to describe language and culture in school, both specifically Black language and culture  and Black students who identify as being from the southern U.S. I conduct linguistic analysis that is beneficial for educators, curriculum designers, and youth using the curriculum. So I write things that teachers and students actually use in the classroom. I also have a focus on writing in that same vein, but for higher education. This work is more known as the scholarship of teaching and learning – creating information and materials that college professors would use in their classes so that students can learn and know what they need to be successful in higher education. My current project extends that model and is focused on helping faculty be successful in higher education institutions. All of this work that is currently being funded by the National Science Foundation takes the model of doing linguistic research and asking “What are we doing it for? Who needs this analysis beyond just linguists in academic conferences? What do teachers need to know about what their students are thinking?” So that’s where that design thinking comes into the academic questions, and once you start thinking that way, it becomes strange that we are just writing stuff without an audience in mind. 

MC: What are some of the challenges in doing public scholarship work and could you share with us any related experience you might have had?

ACH: A big challenge is trying to explain the importance of public scholarship to an academic community that really doesn't necessarily see that as their primary goal. So I did a lot of talks about this in the linguistics world (see this talk by Dr. Charity Hudley at the University of Michigan on “Linguistics and Community Engagement: Keeping it Real”). My argument is that we need to be really honest about why we are doing the research. What often occurs in the linguistics field is that there is a predilection towards doing research that would be interesting for industry but no one talks about that reality, leaving students confused about why we are doing this kind of research. You’re valuing different types of research for different reasons, and we need to have honest conversations about this. What is the incentive of doing one type of research versus another? What is their incentive for not doing this other type of research? A lot of people introduce “pragmatic” discrimination into their research, saying I have to do this and follow these tenure track requirements, I have to publish in this journal, etc. This allows them to completely divert from the conversation about inclusion and justice in research, not answering the real questions of “Why do you have to publish in this journal? Why is the journal constructed that way? Who are the editors that make the decisions to publish your work? Why does the department say that this is the one they value?” If you don’t press these questions, we accept these at face-value and all the conversations we should be having are thrown by the wayside. 

MC: In light of the challenges you described, the role of equity and inclusion sounds crucial to designing research with a public scholarship model. What is the role of equity in doing such work and building such a model?

ACH: To me, equity is the process of reflective questions that you ask yourself, the way you’re valuing time, money, or resources, and saying “Are there things I can do to make this more open, more accessible, for more people?” It’s getting into the state of mind that allows the process. For example, one of the models of equity I use in my work is always involving undergraduate students so that there is a next generation of people who are able to do the work and understand the public scholarship process that they might want to pursue in further graduate studies. Another equitable process that I use is involving lots of students at both graduate and undergraduate levels in research so that they can really see the process as co-authors and research assistants. By doing so, we move away from a single author model into a collective model. 

In the editing and revision process as well, journal editors and book editors can pursue a more open, collective, and transparent model, interrogating the reasons for having an anonymous review without using it as just a default. We need an authentic goal of aiming for conversation and communication among different scholars, rather than trying to have a rational sense of evaluation. Evaluation isn’t necessarily about what is good or bad; it is about who is the dominant and majority group. So my thing is to resist this and create another model of peer review. We’re currently finishing two collections: the Oxford collection on inclusion and a collection on decolonization and linguistics. The whole idea for these collections was to reframe the process to be inclusive, explain the publishing process, and show people how we are doing it by having real conversations about the articles when we give reviews and not just have it be some anonymous feedback that you give to people. That isn’t the intellectual community we’re trying to create and it isn’t the scholarly community that we want to be in. 

The BAD Lab creates a culture where we’re actively sharing work, ideas, and writing together in various forms across universities. If you look at who’s part of the team, we have faculty from all across the country. I also run a NSF project that pretty much does the same thing. We have a collective of scholars that meet monthly to talk about ideas and our research, and a meeting among junior scholars every week. We have these intentional communities that we’ve created to do this work, both here at Stanford with the students and faculty, and also in my professional arena. I’m a huge fan of doing this at conferences but also creating your own workshops and symposia. Zoom has allowed us to do more of these across time zones and geographic regions. During the pandemic, we held our African American linguistics symposium, which allowed people to keep talking with each other and sharing ideas. Like these, holding events that are more informal to get people together, sharing ideas and having conversations about topics, rather than just presenting ideas, create fruitful communities (UC Grand Slam or Stanford SWAYWO as another example). 

MC: Do you have any advice to graduate students or early career scholars that are looking for meaningful ways to engage in public scholarship work?

ACH: Instead of even trying to resist and go up against audiences that are skeptical about public scholarship and your work, find the audiences that welcome it and invite them early in your career. Instead of running up against people who say, “Oh, we don’t do this and we don’t value this,” while you’re still trying to get through the degree requirements and plans, start to see “Who gets it? Where are the academic spaces where people really value this work? What universities or departments value such work in their missions?” This is what I did early on – to look for places that said “this is something that we’d like to get involved in, we value your work and the way you use your time” and started to cultivate research and intellectual spaces with others. 

One group that I got involved in earlier that helped me think about this is Imagining America, based out of UC Davis. I had undergraduate students who went to graduate schools, who got involved with the organization as graduate fellows, and ultimately became faculty. Dr. Blair Ebony Smith, who is now an assistant professor of education in the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was one of my undergraduate students. Blair’s experience is such a great example because she really wanted to do community-centered art and music education for Black girls. Together we looked at where we could do this work that is valued, instead of fighting, fighting, and fighting. I’m not saying you shouldn’t fight and break into spaces, but try to really look at finding communities that can help you to start doing this work early on, to help you plan and have a real audience for your work. 

Another tip for early career scholars is to look at the CV of faculty and other people who are doing this work and see where they published, where they go to conferences, and where their work has been accepted. They can provide structured guidance to where you can find relevant spaces for publishing and communicating your work. A lot of students are so excited and eager to do everything here. My role as the Associate Dean of Educational Affairs is to help people do this in a more systematic way and to have conversations with students to help them understand that a lot of the mystery is actually laid out in people’s CVs and their experiences. 

Dean Anne Charity Hudley has demonstrated to us a number of ways in which we could engage in public scholarship through research and find, create, and build communities that value such work. We are grateful for Dr. Charity Hudley’s encouragement to think hard about intentionality in research design and to have honest conversations about those intentions with others. 

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

See additional work by Professor Charity Hudley: 

• The Indispensable Guide to Undergraduate Research: Success in and Beyond College
• Talking College: Making Space for Black Language Practices in Higher Education
• Duolingo Blog: Celebrating Black History Month and Black language
• Vox article: Why we can’t stop fighting about cancel culture
• The Letters Page: Trump reader turnover did not foster dialogue
• New York Times: BIPOC or POC? Equity or Equality? The Debate Over Language on the Left