In one of our strategy brainstorming sessions, we were advised by a well-intentioned American professor not to call what we were doing "research" because it would be held to particular (academic) standards and metrics that might not be appropriate for the work we were trying to do. The way I read her advice was that basically, if we called ourselves iHub Research then we could be setting ourselves up to fail because we didn't have the right credentials and degrees to do what would be considered "legitimate" research. Luckily the founder and Research Lead at the time, Jessica, decided not to heed the advice and "iHub Research" it was. Actually, initially, our name was Research at iHub (r@*iHub_). But over the years it switched into iHub Research (iHubR).
Angela Okune
Angela Okune, "The name", contributed by Angela Okune, STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 27 June 2018, accessed 21 November 2024. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/name
Critical Commentary
Angela Okune: In this short excerpt, I recall how we were advised in 2011 not to include the word "Research" in the name of the organization because, we were advised it could set us up for particular (academic) research expectations (that we would not be able to meet, the advice giver implied).